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4. THE
C. UNIT
BRARIES
OF Min
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight
hundred and fifty, by
J. S. REDFIELD,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of
New York.
TO
SAMUEL W, OAKEY, Esq.,
OF NEW ORLEANS.
MY DEAR SIR:
IF to prepare a Dedication of the ephemera com-
prised in the ensuing pages be not too unpardon-
able presumption, I pray You to accept, at my
hands, these Sketches of the City, whose steadfast
citizen and public-spirited advocate, through evil
and through good report, You have been for over
thirty years; of the city which You have beheld,
during this period, quadruple in size, and whose
streets, now burdened with the treasures of metro-
politan wealth, were, at Your first arrival, but the
avenues of disagreeable approach to the swamps of
the Faubourg St. Marie.
That You may live for many happy years to
1*
iv
DEDICATION.
watch this city of your adoption continually
increase in commercial prosperity and metropo-
ments that You so much adorn, and that You so
heartily relish, is the earnest prayer of the
AUTHOR
HUDSON-STREET, Sr. Jolin's PARK,
New York City, Oct., 1850.
INTRODUCTION.
THE majority of the sketches in this volume
were written at New Orleans, in the years 1846
and 1847; and have appeared from time to time in
the “ Literary World." The kind consideration
they received from many readers, and their en-
dorsement by many gazettes in this country and
Great Britain, have induced their collection, after
They are presented with the hope that they may
afford brief reference to many phases of life in the
South-western Metropolis, about which there is
little known in other sections of the country.
And, as thus presented, are probably the last lite-
rary appearance of their writer, who, in the pursuit
of a congenial profession, which tolerates no rival
pursuit, will have little leisure for additional labors
in the fields of Belles Lettres.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
The Scenery at the Mouth of the Mississippi-The Table-spoon
Steamboat - View of the Levee from the River--A Bone-break-
ing Drive to the St. Charles Hotel................. 1 7
II.
.
The St. Charles Hotel a Palace, a College, and an Exchange
Apropos of Sandwiches and Punch-How to Lunch for a Dime
-The Bar-room during the Epidemic—The Mammoth Feeding-
room-Hotel Flirtation:...
8–15
0
0
III.
The cozy Verandah—The Loafer-begirt St. Louis--New Orleans,
the Boarding house of the United States—The spirited Vexa-
tion of Brick and Mortar-Morgan's Literary Exchange-How
to get Light-reading gratis ..................... 15—22
IV,
The Calcutta of America—A Literary loaf-baking for future Con-
sumption - The Panorama from the St. Charles ---The City
Awakening—The Levee upon a busy Day—The Destiny of
New Orleans....
.......... 23-29
O
viii
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
'Change-time by Gas-light-Chess and Newspapers-New Orleans'
the Locality for a Congress of Nations—The Science of Money-
making—The Domestic Oases ........ ......... 30—33
VI.
The thrue Municipalities—The Mayor of New Orleans, and his
Connection with Turtle-The Independence of Architecture in
New Orleans—The City Fathers born Poets—Mythology and
Metropolitan Christening--The Graces and the Governors-In-
vocation to Boss Richards and his Mammoth Boot Parements
and Patent-leathers .....
.. 34–41
VII.
The Climate in New Orleans a piece of Mosaic Work-A Joint-
Stock Climate Company—Red Noses and Roses--Salads and
Stoves Procession of the Months-January a Teazing Flirt
—June and Consultations with the Thermometer--July and
Comfort-Yellow Fever and an Italian Sky-Creole warm
Blood., ......
...., 42—49
........
...
......
..
....
.....,
VIII
Rain and Mosquitoes—The second Flood-Incidents of a Street
Freshet—The Paralyzed Fruit-huckster-Water-melons and Or-
anges Flotsam and Jetsam—The Romance of Mosquitos
Distinction between their Bark and their BitemAnalyzation
of the Insect Tribe-How my Friend didn't get the Small-
pox .......
........ 49–64
IX.
“ Yellow Jack”_-The Fever topic at Winter-time-The comfort of
Dying Sporadically--The Board of Health Triumphant--My en-
counter with the Enemy-Hunger and Convalescence–The fair
Victim...
......... 654-73
...........
...
.....
................
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
ix
X.
The Shade of Justinian on a Tour-Civil Lawyers and Uncivil
Laws-Lu and Lucre—Visit to the Court-House-Little Puck-
et-pistol—The Rush after Litigation-Red-faced Clerk a Com-
mentator-Diagram of Legal Machinery–Tribute to Richard
Henry Wilde-Distinction between Religion and Morality-The
St. Louis Cathedral and its Hallowed Reminiscences—The Beg-
gars' Retreat, miscalled a Park ................. 74-90
XI,
The Opera in New Orleans ante-spasmodic- Approach to the
Opera-House--View of the Interior---Notables through a Lorg-
nette-General Smith-Colonel G— 5—Hon.
P S
--The Ex-minister to Mexico -The late Seargent S. Pren-
tiss.................
....... 91-100
XII.
Street print Galleries-Street-side Pencillings-The St. Giles of
New Orleans—The Cemeteries--Cities of the Dead-Incidents
of All Saints' Day ........................... 100-110
XIII.
Water at a Discount-Sham of a Railroad-Ricketing to the Lake
_" Montgomery's,” and the Approach to the “Pass"-Fairy
Beseigers-Life at a Watering-place-How Tom — betrayed
his Plebeian Origin.......................... 111-119
XIV.
Ride to a Sugar Plantation—Glance at a Sugar-house-A King's
Ball—Creole Beauty in the Salon-Summer Quadrilles—A Do-
mestic Love Story .......................... 120_127
XV.
New Orleans a Paradise for a Water-cure Hospital—Levees and
Mound Builders--The Mississippi a Manurer-That Bug-bear,
“Crevasse”-Philanthropist McDonough in an Appendix; where-
in the Maxim “de mortuis” is queried The Pathetic Appeal of
the Father of Waters to the Penobscot River in a Letter more
Rampant tham Discreet..................... 128–136
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
XVI.
Captain Ric's Epithalamium-The Relation between Matrimony
and Charivaris-Jottings upon the Sheet Iron Band-Captain
given a Lift to Immortality–Fall of the spurned Notary of
Royal-street, and how he Revenged himself with a Fish-
Horn ........
............................ 137--146
XVII.
Another fling at the Ponchartrain Railroad-Not forgetting to
Pleasantly Remember the Mexican Gulf Railway-Cicerone-
ship of a Veteran of the War with England -- Jolt to the
Battle-ground--The Veteran grows Loquacious, and Remem.
bers the whole Story of the Landing of the British under Gen.
Packenham, and their brush with Gen. Jackson.. 148–161
XVIII.
Literature in New Orleans going to Par Value-Newspapers sim-
ilia ad similibus-The “Pic," in its Infancy " Plazma and
Straws"-Kendall, Lumsden, and Porter; Frolic, Good-fellow-
ship, and Humor--The “Delta," and its Audacity-The “Com-
mercial Bulletin"_" French Gazettes”—The “Crescent" and
“True Delta" .............................. 162-172
XIX.
" A Run" of a Thousand Miles, mere Bagattelle to a “ Crescenter"
-False Pretences of a Steamboat-Swarming of a Commer-
cial Bee hive--How a Town Wag committed “Flat Piracy” in
the Opinion of a Laughed-at District Attorney—The “Peytona,"
and her Race-horse Proportions--Leaving New Orleans River-
ward--A Day on the Mississippi Daguerreotyped. 173–186
THE MANHATTANER
IN
NEW ORLEANS.
I.
GETTING TO NEW ORLEANS.
MHE "Father of waters”--the tortuous and elas-
I tic Mississippi River-possesses a most unpo-
etical mouth. No one can deny that. But its dis-
and forceps—may be excused when considering the
number of watery relations who avail themselves
of his good nature to escape from forests, swamps,
and dreary solitudes thousands of miles in the
heart of the North American Continent.
And the surrounding features of the landscape
(daring the wrath of Academicians Durand and
Doughty, for thus designating the portions of soil
at the embouchure of the Mississippi River) are
quite calculated to impress new beholders with the
idea that the aforesaid father of waters beheld his
best days, long before La Salle and De Soto left
their cards, graven with ingenious steel, on the
trees that skirted his banks; and is now altogether
GETTING TO NEW ORLEANS.
in the condition of a river exhausted by burdens
that trade and commerce-relentless giants that
they are-heap upon his back, and steadily increase,
year by year.
I thought the above and much more, as I stood
upon the deck of a packet ship (after the usual
monotonous coast voyage from New York) at the
meeting of the Mississippi with the Mexican Gulf;
and alternately divided my gaze between the clay-
colored water at my side (whose said clay-colored
embrace the blue gulf waves haughtily rejected,
and drew a distinct line of separation to their more
intimate acquaintance,) and the sandy, boggy,
loggy, grassy, and snaggy strips of land that
boasted the name of Balize, (or “Beacon,') and
began the important empire of Plaquemine, in
Franco-American Louisiana—the empire so famous,
not long ago, in newspaper political history.
"An unpromising beginning for New Orleans,"
said I to the pilot who had just ascended the ship's
side, and was preparing her for an "admission to
the bar."
"Our river is very like brandy.”—
"Like brandy ?”
"Yes—the more one knows of it, the better one
likes it; and you will find it a better ending, when
you reach the Leyce to-morrow evening."
sea-sickness, and who, standing by, had heard the
scrap of conversation, was understood to murmur
GETTING TO NEW ORLEANS.
plethoric satisfaction, with something like a distant
allusion to a distant adage, "bad beginning, good
ending."
“To-morrow evening, and no wind ?"
“We tow up, sir, by yonder steamboat.”
“Yonder steamboat! Was the tablespoon
shaped piece of timber, decorated with a brace of
pipes, half way up whose sides the ingenious
helmsman had erected an observatory for a look-
out seaward, after stray ships—a steamboat ?"
Shades of Watts and Fulton, in your wander-
ings through the world, you have beheld many an
unpitying adaptation of steam to utilitarianism:
but never can you have beheld a more remorseless
one, than was exhibited in this aforesaid table-
spooned piece of timber, which came “making up
to us," and dodging about the ship, like an awk-
ward country lad making advances to his milk-
maid sweetheart, when, like our ship on the bar,
she hesitates on the top of a stile, thorn and bram-
ble imprisoned, and needing assistance over.
The gallant steam in the boilers seemed con-
scious it was badly used by the confinement in so
unsightly a hulk, for it shrieked, and sobbed, and
wailed most piteously, while, spliced to the ship's
side, the aforesaid tablespoon commenced an up-
ward voyage.
For twenty hours of day and night-the moon
was up during the latter time, fortunately--we
GETTING TO NEW ORLEANS.
steamed through ninety miles of plantations, with
orange-trees (that made one thirsty to look at;) and
Lilliputian clumps of cypresses, with pendent, me-
lancholy moss; and by mass meetings of demo-
cratic looking logs and snags, where numberless
alligators, in sundry oratorical positions, seemed
moralizing over the progress of the age”_the
progress of river navigation; until at length we
came in sight of the Crescent City.
The sun was setting in a cloudless sky, and
saluting the dome of the St. Charles Hotel—that
Magog of Inns—and the steeples-alas ! how few
in number—he lighted up for view a" very exten-
sive range of village," as in days gone by, the
Cockney said of Gotham.
On my right, as we steamed up to it, was the
broad Levee. On my left, Algiers, a very fitting
cognomen for an uncivilized appearing strip of
land, sleepily eyeing New Orleans over a mile of
muddy water, and walled by flat boats, and hulks
of steamboats, in all stages of dilapidation, wrinkled
with levee crevasses, and dotted with ship-yards in
miniature, until it was wonderful to think how so
wafery a piece of ground could retain upon its sur-
face even the small bits of human life, and the col-
laterals of human business, visible upon it.
A dry dock and an iron foundry were in build-
ing. They must sink it, surely, some odd night.
But the City Levee !
GETTING TO NEW ORLEANS.
In youthful geographical ruminations, I had
pictured it a lofty embankment, spurning with
haughty look and defiant mien the turbulent as-
saults of Mississippian floods; or. had thought it
some species of wall, to which the time-worn struc-
tures of Athens and Egypt were mere shells. But
here it was a modest commercial plain ; pile-built,
and earth filled; sloping gradually from the river;
variegated as far as the eye could reach--and no
small look at that with cotton bales, and sugar
hogsheads, and molasses casks, and corn sacks, in
quantities sufficient to gladden the vision of Eng-
land's Prime Minister, in Ireland's blackest days of
distress and famine; and bits of machinery, and
ploughs, and oat bags, and hay: bales, and stáves,
and wooden pails, and packages of hemp, and
leviathan hogsheads of tobacco, which, to look at,
made the stoutest mule shriek in agony, all mixed
up, and in worse confusion than the streets about
Essex Market, in Gotham, good reader, about
moving day, in Sunny May. :-*.. .:.
· Across this levee, stores and warehouses, which
hugged the like commodities, in brick and mortar
embrace. In front of it, sectarian assemblies of
ships, fresh from prow contact with the sparkling
waves and foaming billows of all known seas and
oceans. Steamboats, too; ungainly water build-
ings, of three stories in height, with cupolas and
domes, and observatories to match, but which, for.
all their unwieldy looks, could bring their three or
GETTING TO NEW ORLEANS.
four thousand bales of cotton, from half as many
miles in the interior, to say nothing of three or four
hundred passengers besides. Further down, angry
crowds of flat boats, with most picturesque crews :
the much talked of flat boats, mere floating grana-
ries and coal-yards, secure in their timber fragi-
lity.
I had small time for observation. The ship was
soon moored; and I was more inclined for a good
shore supper than a poetical commercial reverie in
a place where one's legs were being perpetually
recommended to the notice of experienced sur-
geons. Besides, there was small time, in the deep-
ening twilight. Deepening, indeed! Once get the
sun down, in latitude 30°, and down falls the cur-
tain of night, like an act drop on a condemned tra-
gedy, or the convincing truth of a bitter criticism,
on a young author's comprehension.
"To the St. Charles, av coorse, yer 'onor,” said
an exile of Erin, in the fancy dress of a cabman, as
he lashed on my last trunk; and shutting me up
in his vehicle, proceeded to drive me to lodgings. -
So busy was I in fancying the surprise of my
stomach, when it should once more taste the good.
cheer of a hotel, that I did not particularly observe,
by the dim street lights, the events and scenes of a
drive through some of the most singular quarters I
had ever beheld, in town, village, or city. I can
only recall to mind dioramic and shifting views of
avenues of cotton bales ; groups of old clo' shops,
GETTING TO NEW ORLEANS.
gaudily set forth with parti-colored handkerchiefs,
in number and sizes enough for a regiment of
noses; oyster stands, where dirty mouths and flick-
ering tallow candles grinned ghostly satisfaction;
coffee and cake stands, in a brace of deserted mar-
kets, where negresses and lazy butcher boys were
engaged in melodious quarrels quite anti-scriptural
in their tone but yet suggestive of the tower of
Babel; a dirty park; and streets evidently paved
on the principle of five stones to the square yard;
all which, at the end of my drive, (drive odds
collar bones and knee-pans, as Bob Acres might
have said, had he been my fellow-fare,) sent me to
my chamber in the St. Charles Hotel, with hearty
thanks that I even jolted through such confusion,
worse than confounded, and had no fates behind
me to urge a walk instead.
:
:
II.
HOTEL LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS.
SYET the St. Charles Hotel down in St. Peters-
W burg and you would think it a palace. In
Boston, and ten to one you would christen it
college. In London, and it would marvellously
remind you of an exchange.
In New Orleans it is all three. A palace for
creature comforts; a college for the study of human
nature; and an exchange for money and appetite.
But certainly, from the building's exterior, you
would never imagine it a hotel unless waggishly
told it was builded by Barnum, that immortal
guardian of Tom Thumb, and American-godfather
of Jenny Lind. And who, according to divers of
the Connecticut people, is an intuitive architect.
Its builders were very modest men, and con-
structed it upon an angular piece of ground, hem-
med in by lofty stores and narrow streets, and
shadowed by neighboring balconies, and garnished
HOTEL LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS.
9
with oyster saloons, fruit shops, and billiard rooms;
and all in such a way that one is as long in finding
out its value to a city where fine edifices are as
yet exceptions, as was the celebrated financier
Jacob B- (whose pen and purse now control
its destinies) in discovering its value for investment.
Some whose critical ideas of architecture have
never yet been realized (and probably never will
until they go to heaven) are unable to discover the
beauty of the building. An imposing look it
certainly has when abstracted in the mind's eye,
from its neighboring masses of brick and mortar;
but in its present site is only a mammoth pearl
thrown before swine.
Apropos.. Oh City Fathers of New Orleans!
clean out the hog-pens around the St. Charles...
But where, in this hotel, can we study human
nature ?
Imprimis, in the large bar room beneath the
grand porch and reception hall, whose subterranean
entrance from the pleasant air would impart great
satisfaction to a regiment of Goughites, and add
new spirits to their watery eloquence. For in it
Emperor Appetite and King Alcohol hold their
court in a most recherché style. There, of a win:
ter's morning, when the sun is near meridian, or of
ä Winter's evening, when the damp air or chilly
northers without seem to say, "ah, apropos of
sandwiches and punch," may be seen hundreds of
steady, conscientious lovers of lunches and liquors
2*
10
HOTEL LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS.
going and returning, or clustering by pillar and
column in social meriment, listening to the play
of knife and fork and the click of spoons in heavy
tumblers, and looking at the ruby sparkle in the
polished decanters. Hungry men and those athirst
getting new appetites. Those fresh from the gombo
soup, and the ham, and the punch and julep, -
rushing back again, unable to be tormented by
the mere looking on. Woe be to that deputy
barkeeper, who in this retreat is slow of motion,
or deficient in energy, or weak in constitution. I
tremble to think of the juleps, and punches, and
nogs, and soups, and plates of fish, and game, and
beef and loaves of bread, that I have seen appear
from side doors and vanish (like superior fireworks
in old Niblo's of a dry week) among the waiting
crowds at the long counter; or of the piles of dimes
that each devoted (yet willing in all his agency)
barkeeper swept into the little holes to nestle in
boxes, ånd--for aught you or I know, reader-in
barrels below.
These crowds appear and disappear day by day,
relentlessly eating and drinking their way (lunch-
wise) into the early summer. Then the bar boys
breathe less short; and punches and soup from a
quick consumption get into a decline, Hot water
is uncalled for. Juleps and iced ale are in demand
until the sunny hours of August, when Yellow Jack
comes into town, and the room echoes to the tread
of some score or so, whom death nor disease can
HOTEL LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS.
11
frighten from the worship of the appetite; or who,
secure by acclimation, over their clinking glasses
or ice ringing goblets laugh at the passing terrors
of the “grim conqueror."
The crowds of last winter !—where are they?
“?Tis well we've so large a country," thought I,
asking myself the above question one September
day as, just myself through the yellow fever ordeal,
I stood in the room. One barkeeper then looked
sorrowfully over the air-tenanted area before him,
and winked despondingly as he thought of last
winter; and of Tom this and Harry that and Ned
the other, who were now over the Alleghanies, far
away; trout fishing in New England, or polka
dancing in Saratoga, or flirting at Newport.
A theatre bill of the St. Charles, three months
old--one of the last night of the past season, and
as yellow as though sick with the fever-hung
mournfully on a side wall; an old steamboat card,
its no less sorrowful neighbor, and an old shipping
list, hard by, hanging to their rusty tacks, with the
tenacity of autumn leaves on hickory boughs.
But the bar-room below is a trifle!
Turn to the left in the centre room above, about
the hour of three on a January afternoon.
The door opens. A hum of voices and a clash
of knives and forks and spoons salute you stun-
ingly. What is the occasion? A gala day? A
public dinner?
The door op darles and spoons a cala day?
12
HOTEL LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS.
You see frantic waiters dashing round, going
and coming—darting here—darting there; provi-
sions everywhere for an army, surely.
Nothing but the gentlemen's ordinary of the
hotel! The feeding room of two or three hundred
individual bachelors and exiled married ones, who
call New Orleans their home for five or six months
in each year, and for the rest possess an undefined
position in the world.
Among them although, a few. old stagers to
whom Mudge and Wilson (worthy hosts, I would
you knew them, reader) are fathers and mothers,
and nothing else.
: Dinner over, the inner and the outer porches,
and the pavement, fifteen feet below, are peopled
as if by magic, with a crowd, whose toothpicks
well accord in poetry of motion with the eyes
gleaming so satisfiedly above. What! this large
toothpicking crowd escaped from the ordinary just
left? Why not? Very true, there are some five
and forty eating houses just about; and eat at a
restaurant, and pick your teeth on hotel steps, is a
stale Boston joke.
Or it is a winter's evening, and in the ladies'
drawing room flash beams of beauty, and gas, and
jewels.
The weekly soirée of the establishment.
We have seen the bachelor lodgers in their
eating, and drinking, and toothpicking ways of
life; behold now the ladies with their husbands,
HOTEL LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS:
13
:VU
brothers, -lovers, and a few friends from the outside
city. Marvellous collection! The blonde from
New England, and the southern planter's son; the
brunette from Georgia or Alabama, or interior
parish of Louisiana; and the male representative
of Western trade, or Eastern manufactures, or
British mercantile snobbishness, dancing amicably
vis-à-vis in the monotonous, untiring quadrille, or
now whirling in the waltz—the giddy waltz, of
course, after the usual phraseology; or in that
mysteriously born dance, the Polka, of which an
American bard long since despondingly asked:
:: Oh, Polka, Polka' pray how come you so, .
..I've asked ten dandies, and the ten don't know. :::
: Here, too, is modest beauty from Ohio (papa in
the pork trade;), there a dashing belle, whose altars
at Saratoga and the Sulphur-Springs are yet warm
with sacrifices of her last summer admirers (her
third winter at New Orleans, and no husband yet.)
In yonder corner à réd-cheeked, blue-eyed miss
from New England (her grandparents snugly in
bed the while, in the old homestead, and little
dreaming of the to them-degenerate conduct of
their descendant.) Or here a proud Edith Dombey,
from Louisville ('tis a city of proud women now,-
days, shade of Daniel Boone,) a fascinating flirt
from Baltimore; or the bewildered milliner-mar-
tyred daughter of an interior planter. Every
state with its peculiar beauty in the room. And
the shears and needles of yotir Boston, Manhattan,
14 HOTEL LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS.
Philadelphia, Charleston, and country tailor recog-
nisable in the dress coats sprinkled all about the
room;-black dots, that they are, on a snow white
gauze and satin landscape.
There will be music, dancing, nonsense, eating,
and flirting, until three o'clock in the morning,
and the same things for three or four months
thereafter; but the July sun will shine unrebuked
through the window shades, and find this chamber
of beauty--this audience room of hotel aristocracy
-as tenantless as the bar below.
Although this same hotel was chiselled, and
trowelled, and painted, and decorated, and peopled
by the genii of Yankee utilitarianism, there lingers
about it a deal of romantic interest; and would it
could interest in its behalf the pen of a Leigh
Hunt, (think of the St. Charles figuring in the
Indicator, or a new series of "Men, Women and
Books,'') or a second Laman Blanchard worthily
to embody, in eloquence of essay, truthfulness of
sketch, and beauty of diction, confessions of life
and character, startling and instructive. For with
the latter its every room and vestibule is rife. The
very left behind forgotten trunks, piled in a store-
room to the bar hard by, could tell a thousand
wondrous tales. From yonder window has cast
many a stranger his last look-upon busy life, and
lain down on his pillow to die; thoughts of his far
off home and expecting friends making doubly
painful the last bitter hour. In this or that room
HOTEL LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS.
15
the gambler lodger has laid his plots, or woven his
web of cunning, which were to ruin and ensnare
those for whom parental solicitude were vainly
expended. These halls and corridors are full of
echoes, and thronged with shadows; echoes of
mirth ; echoes of sorrow; shadows of human life;
their original essence and substance, part of the
past, and perhaps an injunction for the present, to
remember.
III.
HOTEL LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS.-RESTAURANTS
AND LITERATURE AT MORGAN'S.
A S if the St. Charles was not a sufficient offering
A to the Gog and Magog of eating and drinking,
whose court, as held in New Orleans, is not to be
despised or lightly treated a plainer and more
modestly demeaned hotel has been erected on an
opposite corner, in its appearance much like the
famous "Holt's” of Fulton street, and which takes
its name, "The Verandah," from the semi-orential
and semi-French gallery that runs around the
second story, and is supported by iron pillars
heading skyward from the side walk.
The Verandah prides itself upon its cosiness.
The snugness of its exterior and the comfort of its
inn-door life possess peculiar attractions for families.
And there is about it altogether a home look and
a home feeling as pleasing as it is novel for New
Orleans.
HOTEL LIFE 17
FE)
.
.
ORLEANSIN NEW ORLEANSThe Verandah has an aristocratic cousin in the
St. Louis Hotel, which stands in the elder portion
of the city and boasts a French baptism. It pos-
sesses quite the air of an Italian ducal palace.
And the idea is nursed by the view of dirty streets,
and dirty faces, and dirty moustaches all about;.
and by the cafés and casinos sprinkled around
within convenient hailing. Tall buildings and
smoky chimneys hedge it in; and one will almost
break his neck in the narrow street it fronts en-
deavoring to catch a glimpse or two of its façade
and summit. Magnificent intention and gigantic
plan stood its godfathers at its first christening,
and, like not a few godfathers, were remarkably
injudicious. So it will long remain a part of the
unwanted wealth of the city; the headquarters of
Creole loaferism, (understand, good reader, that
to all kinds of men and things indigenous to New
Orleans.) It is warmly and spiritedly supported
at lunch time and o' evenings; and its rotunda (a
gloomy looking place with its echoes and marble
pavements surrendered to groaning deputy sheriffs
and ranting auctioneers, who cry their sales in
alternate French and English with musical tone,
as if a plethoric sow should change every other
grunt for a sostenuto falsetto note,) one may hear
nosed more French than a nervous headache could
withstand in a minute's time.
And, for my humble self, I shall never hear of
18.
HOTEL LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS..
the St. Louis Hotel without thinking of dirty shirts
and moustaches.
So much for the three first-class hotels !
If any one dislike their look, a lodging can be
chosen almost anywhere. Furnished rooms and
cafés elbow each other wistfully; and bachelor
bread-toasters, coffee-boilers, and the like, are soon
picked up from neighboring shops.
Somebody has called New Orleans "the board-
ing house of these United States.” Certes, its
every tenth house has furnished rooms or appli-
ances for travelling appetites ; nests for the human
swallow-birds of passage, who make wintry flights
to southern altars of Mammon, and sacrifice the
delights and pleasures of home in their native
places, that they may work for the yellow metal,
and obey “honest Iago's” advice, of “putting
money in their purse."
As for promiscuous appetite—the appetite which
dealeth in quantity not quality, and snaps up any.
thing, that is "filling at the price”--this will find
a café or restaurateur on every block; from one
which tolerably emulates its counterpart in world-
renowned Paris, at a charge of from fifty cents to
a dollar and a half for anything approaching an
appetite-satisfier, down through various grades of
chop, and à la Sweeny eating dens, to the more
plebeian oyster-stand and bar-room counter, where,
for a modest dime, the hungry stomach may pro-
cure an hour's “stay of proceedings."
RESTAURANTS-LITERATURE AT MORGAN'S. 19
I can never forget those marvellous two blocks
upon St. Charles street, running from the great
hotel towards Lafayette Square. For in no other
metropolis has greater vexation been brought to
brick and mortar, lath and timber, than we find
endured by these two blocks, which, from newborn
autumn until dying spring, are redolent of oysters
and lunches, juleps and punches; or filled with
the echoes of falling tenpins and clicking billiard
balls.
Have you fortitude to imagine five and forty
tal King Cole) set apart for the express behoof of
hoosiers and strangers, who, for lack of better em-
ployment, eat and drink and smoke away the day-
light and the night?
In their centre, not long since, an association of
philanthropic capitalists erected a large Exchange,
and solemnly dedicated it to purposes of literature
and commercial discussion. But in a year from its
philanthropic christening, its spacious ante-cham-
ber had become a drinking shop—the bar, some
fifty feet in length, and backed by splendid pier-
glasses that cast unrebuked reflections upon gaping
mouths, and watery eyes, and ruby noses-above
were lodging rooms, from which were ruthlessly
driven the hoping spirits that had shiveringly come
to regenerate the neighborhood.
But yet literature (of a kind) and drinking rooms
20. HOTEL LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS.
The same building which screens post-office mys-
teries from the vulgar gaze, protects an extensive
depôt for periodicals, and by its side a bar. Within
this building every day, much-abused post-office
clerks, and over-praised bar-boys, and the good
natured, smiling Morgan, vie with each other in
their assiduity to customers.
Few who visit New Orleans fail of knowing:
“Morgan;" a man who long since took the infec-
everywhere he goes. Turn into the Exchange
building from Royal street. In the passage way
you pass the dirty man whose idiosyncrasy seems
to lie in the manufacture and sale of buckskin
purses and suspenders, upon whose wares press the
crowd that patronize newspaper literature through.
the postman's little hole, behind which heaps of
pennies darken the atmosphere; and the negro
girl, with her flowers and cakes, and who is always,
cigar man--all of whom blockade the entrance to
the post-office and bar, (on which latter you turn
your back to drop a letter or to call your box
number,) and make the passage in and out, a thing
to be-talked over for a day afterwards; and
through a pushing crowd (if 'tis steamer day, and
every day is steamer day just now ;) and holding
your nose against the seductive savor of mint and
lemons; and shutting your eyes to forlorn marine
views and portraits hanging all about (you'd think
RESTAURANTS—LITERATURE AT MORGAN'S. 21
for sale, only there is no:lunatic asylum in the vi-
cinity ;) after which you dodge through a smoky
door, and there you are at "Morgan's.” Straight
before you on a table all the papers of the age-
English, Irish, French and Spanish ;. City, and
New York; the Mammoth weeklies, too; "Punch"
nudging the “Nation; "Yankee Doodle" grinning
over the “ Western Continent;' the “Sun” shining
benignantly on the " Literary World," and the
" Baptist Advocate” looking black-typed sermons
for “Sunday Times.” By their side a wooden box,
into which merrily drop the silver coin, as the
crowds go by. Further on, the modern novels,
not to be counted; but for measurement by the
zines. Hard by them the yellow-covered litera-
ture of the day-translations from the French, no
way improved in morals by their transition from
sparkling Parisian to slow-coach English. In
sundry corners, cob-web penned and shadow-dark-
ened, stand in military array editions of annuals
and school-books. Leaning over the various coun-
ters a listless crowd. A nervous lady is dipping
fly out as she unrolls the fashion plate. A medical
student almost makes your heart to bleed, so brow-
knittingly he pores over the "Lancet." An Eng-
lish cotton-broker is chuckling over the toryism of
“Blackwood;" his Irish neighbor scratching his
head enthusiastically over the “Dublin Nation."
22
HOTEL LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS.
Divers Hoosiers, deeply absorbed in the pages of
some such tale as “The Eagle of Popocatapet), or
the Cave of Blue Ruin," with covers quite "sick-
loungers reading by the hour, and criticising half
audibly as they go, as independent as if good-
natured Morgan, whose arm trembles with the
wrappings and tyings up it suffers minute by
minute, had their reading's worth all snugly nestled
in his stout money-box, and they with an honor-
able receipt upon their day's conscience.
If any association of disappointed literati should
dare the abduction of Morgan, what indignation
meetings they would hold about New Orleans !
IV.
THE CALCUTTA OF AMERICA.
NEW ORLEANS is decidedly entitied to be
I called the Calcutta of America,
Thwarted enterprise, baffled endeavor, youthful
hope, desperate plannings, all emigrate to its pre-
cincts to battle with fate, or to court fortune; to
amass wealth, and if living after the 6 gold hunt is
over," to return home to spend it. Few and far
between are they who cultivate within it a home
feeling, or who fall in love with it at first sight; or
who, by long residence, become growingly enam-
ored of its charms.
"Work, work, work," is the unceasing cry.
Every one appears in fear lest daylight should
cheat him of a dollar. Except among the Creoles
-the aborigines of the placema man of leisure is a
wonder. On 'change; on street corner; at the din-
ner-table; between the acts at opera and theatre;
24 THE CALCUTTA OF AMERICA.
in the drawing-room; at the ball or soirée; in the
sleeping apartments; stocks, cotton, sugar, and
money are the liyeliest topics.
Taste in the fine arts and love of the belles-let-
tres have hitherto fallen victims to the smell of
trade, and money that fills the in-door and out-
door atmospheres. And yet, amid all the discour-
agements of the place, there are many patient
spirits at work preparing leaven for a future New
Orleans literary loaf.
The loaf will be very good, no doubt, but the
baker, whoever he may be, will go into bank-
ruptcy !*
I remember that one morning in May, I aston-
ished my night-cap by doffing it a few minutes be-
fore sunrise, and making an ascent to the dome of
St. Charles
The city's pulse was at a low beat, and its stream
of life in the many street arteries as sluggish as the
blood of an apoplectic. The wind from the Gulf
came in gentle puffs, toying gracefully at times
with the flag that waved above me in compliment
to the presence of some solitary lodgers in the
* These sentences were written some years back. As capital
has accumulated in New Orleans greater attention is being paid to
the matters of belles-lettres and the arts. The common school
system is working admirably; and the Municipal library bids fair,
in ten years, to be the library of the South. De Bows “ Commer-
cial Review” is published in New Orleans, and is a magazine dis-
playing much literary ability and sectional research.
THE CALCUTTA OF AMERICA.
rooms below. A dusky cloud swung to and fro
like a dropsical balloon above the swamp on my
right; and the slightest possible fog was rising
from the Mississippi that, far as my eye could
reach, “went on in its winding way" like a
huge slimy serpent creeping upon the face of the
earth. I was above the entire city with a very ex-
tensive drop of the eye upon chimneys and roofs-
very extensive when I thought that half the range
a ten years back were not summoned into exist-
ence by the magic wave of trowel and plummet.
Across the river at “Gretna" (no place for run-
away lovers, reader, although blacksmiths are
plentiful thereabouts, and forgery a common crime,
a tinkling factory bell was lazily performing its
office; perhaps reluctantly, if it had in remem-
brance the sleepy eyes its sound was calling to
consciousness. A tow-boat in the river some miles
below the city was puffing its way to the city,
hugging in its monster grasp a brace of thousand-
tonned ships. Above, one of the crack Louisville
packet-steamers came by the groves of ghostly
cypresses as proud and imperious in bearing as a
mettled racehorse upon the turf which his hoofs
had successfully known time and again.
The sun was next beheld hovering over the
Gulf, maturing an audacious dash at the many
eastward windows of the city. A faint hum began
to be heard; the groans of the city for the coming
of another day of trial; increasing every minute:
26
THE CALCUTTA OF AMERICA.
“ From field suburban rolled the early cart,
As slept the revel so awoke the mart."
First the rattle of the milk wagons. Next the
taking its morning smoke behind the swamp.
Now and then the clatter of hoofs upon the pave-
ment told that some shoulder-bent book-keeper
was taking his morning equestrian exercise, and,
daily gave him. The ponderous dray shook the
houses as it thundered toward the Levee, drowning
even the stentorian voice of its driver "boy" im-
provising upon “Mary Blane" or "the Rose of
Alabama."
The hum soon became a roar. The caldron of
New Orleans commerce was again upon the boil,
and as I looked around I could scarcely keep from
moralizing and extemporizing an essay upon the
eternal American theme of the country's destiny.
Here was a city half increased in fifteen years;
what would it be in— but the hotel gong warned
me to a breakfast toilette, and I left the essay in its
primitive and useful chaos.
But there is perpetually upon exhibition this
panorama of trade at which I took my ante-break-
fast glance from the St. Charles dome; and I have
often seen a stranger from interior wilds gazing
upon it with astonishment and admiration; and
perhaps with awe.
His station may have been before the custom-
THE CALCUTTA OF AMERICA.
27
house, which in the hollow of the crescent-shaped
turn the Mississippi has, commands the view of
miles. Before him is stretched the plain of wood
and earth before alluded to-the Levee; under
which not long ago rolled the treacherous colored
flood now some couple of hundred feet encroached
upon the opposing shore to make amends for its
this side subtraction. A wilderness of ships and
steamboats skirt it—if 'tis early morning. If but
one short hour after sun-rise, the decks and wharfs
are all astir, processions of loaded drays are going
by, three mules at length before and twelve feet
of neck-breaking timber behind, their continuous
stringing making street-crossing hazardous and
quite a work of skill. Thousands of hogsheads,
bales, and bags and packages crowd and jostle
and hedge each other in. Adown the riverward
streets flow rapid streams of human heads and
legs, whose escape from an entanglement is quite
a disappointment; sailors; stevedores; steamboat
hands; clerks; planters; wealthy merchants too;
running to and fro with divers projects in their
head, and all the solutions to end in the quod erat
demonstrandum of money. A million dollars could
not buy the articles of traffic taken in at one
glance; articles of traffic that before twenty-four
hours have gone by will all have disappeared-
their place supplied by different lots and newer
samples. Above the tornado noise and bustle can
be plainly heard the hailing among water craft;
28
THE CALCUTTA OF AMERICA.
the bell-ringings of arriving and outgoing steam-
boats, which leave and come with an amusing air
of nonchalant accustomednessbutting headwise
to their Levee berths like a sick man at sea endea-
voring to climb to bed. These dissolving views
have been seen for years, and will be seen for
years to come.
And there are many guides to tell you all
about it.
"How do you like the city ?", inquires an old
resident. While you hesitate for an answer, him-
self replies:
"Excellently, of course; fine commercial ad-
vantages, eh?—the store-house of the Mississippi
Valley—great destiny ahead."
Fine commercial advantages! So everybody
thinks. And everybody in that opinion is right.
The strongest backward endeavor of black des-
tiny could not retard the prosperity of New Or-
leans.* Nature had her eye upon the outlet of
the Mississippi long before she invited her sister
Art to form a co-partnership in the way of com-
pleting a grand commercial emporium. The waters
of a score of mighty rivers mingle with the waves
that dash the Levee and float down treasures of
* Perhaps the enthusiasm of former years has stated this too
strongly. It is becoming evident to every practical thinker in
New Orleans, that her citizens must build a railroad running north-
ward to the Ohio River. There is great danger of a diversion of
Western trade by the means of eastern railways, canals, et cetera.
produce and wealth increasing every year. New
Orleans is the market for the products of three
And the traveller in New Orleans must believe
all this the very day he lands. For heaven pre-
serve him from the old button-holders of the city
who upon some rainy day, when, as the price lists
say, “out-door operations are at a stand,” will
decoy him into a corner and prose over New
Orleans in the "Past” and in the “Future;" who
will tell him how much its commerce increased
thirty years back; how the French retarded it
with their dancing-master ways of business, and
how the Yankees gave it gigantic pushes; how ten
years ago the ground now forming the dray-wor-
ried streets of the Second Municipality was but a
swamp and a place for croakers of another kind
than those who big with stocks and exchanges
“bull and bear" in Camp-street; how what now is
swamp, in ten years hence will break out scrofula-
ly with brick and mortar dwellings...
Let one instanter make up his mind that the
city is to be the greatest in the world. If so it turn
out to be, in his grey-haired time of life he has
but to look knowingly and say, "I knew it all
along." If it does not he may keep mum; and
no matter.
A PEEP INTO THE EXCHANGE.
T ET us stroll to the exchange, some evening,
U where oddly enough, but in strict accordance
with the iron sway of utility, 'change time is at
early candle-light; for daylight is too precious in
New Orleans to be wasted in a lounging talk.
· Above the bar and post-office (the former out of
sight, you'd think, but no, looked down upon
through a wide cut-out in the floor) are the talking,
smoking, reading-rooms of the merchants. By
twilight they begin to fill. The dozen chess-tables
in a small recess are early taken up-a crowd stand
round for observation and remark; and calcula-
tions are begun, and checking done by men who
have calculated and checked all day to some pur-
pose. By and by the sand upon the floor is scrap-
ed about like the strings of a yiolin when innocent
" thirteen" is learning Paddy Carey. Knots of
A PEEP INTO THE EXCHANGE.
readers stand around the bulletin boards and by
the tables, where the gazettes of all the States are
lying. But everywhere a talking, money night-
mared crowd. Yonder is the cotton broker, with
the fluctuations of the market for a ten years past
all penciled on his face; his brain divided into
sections like the columns of a balance sheet, for
dollars and cents, or farthing's rise and farthing's
fall, whose life is only nursed on from year to year,
and saved from shipwreck on the grinding sands
of anxious care by the summer trip he makes to
England, or to France, or to a Northern State.
Near him is a sugar broker, fat with perpetual
tasting of the sweets of life, whose jolly phiz, and
merry laugh, and careless talk are fine offsets for
the troubled look of his neighbor "in the cotton
line.” In one corner the banking agent, whose
principles are in London or Paris, (their corres-
pondence a nightmare in the dreams of lazy post-
masters,) chatting familiarly with the jolly planter
who has just doffed his hat in return to the obse-
quious bow of a passing factor. In another cor-
ner a sallow-faced man, versed in the tobacco
mysteries (you may tell it by the nervous twitching
of his face) is figuring estimates for the London
market. His neighbor in the flour line has his
thoughts in Boston, and on memory's wings is
dozing around its built up cow-paths for a sale.
Some are English-you can tell them by their
rosy look, the oddity of their hat, the starch of
1
32 A PEEP INTO THE EXCHANGE.
their collar, and the hang of the coat. The
French you know by their volubility and gesture.
Others are Germans as they read or talk, no spar-
kle of the eye or change of features indicates their
in their eye, like the feel of a Bostonian east wind
they carry themselves with an unmistakable air of
superiority and independence; and although mer-
chants now, and family men, they feed on the
important feelings of their clerkship days, and the
savor of the old Pine and Wall-street times hangs
around them still. Some from Philadelphia; their
gestures are all right angles, and invisible parallel-
ograms are on the floor wherever they walk.
And you could work out algebraically the number
of pins in their well adjusted neck-cloth. Some
from everywhere.
If there is ever to be a Congress of nations, let it
be held in New Orleans; there will be no mileage
for delegates. Of all the crowd, perhaps not one
calls the city his home, from birth or choice.
Faces are here upon whom the Exchange gas-
lights have shone for many a winter; faces, too,
that next year you will look in vain to find. All
intent on speculation and accumulation, working
for them all the day, dreaming of them by night..
So it is in every country more or lessbe sure
of that. But yet you may search the world over
to find the science of money-making reduced to
A PEEP INTO THE EXCHANGE.
33
such perfection, and become of such an all-engross-
ing influence as in New Orleans.
But if the denizens of the Crescent City work
for money in the daylight, gas and candles see it
freely spent. The clerk is at his bowling, or his
billiards, or in theatre parquet. The mechanic at
the circus, or the minor ball. The beauty and
fashion of the city throng the concert-room, or be-
siege Donizetti and Halevy from latticed boxes in
the Opera Français. The evening is the reaction
of the day; the prolonging of the money-fever.
Here and there are quiet drawing-rooms, from
the breasts of whose inmates, and from whose tran-
quil firesides, at which domestic love is ever a
chaste presiding goddess, the demons of Mammon
have not wholly driven away home pleasures
wherein the quiet soul which has escaped the fas-
cinations and seductions of the perfidious sirens of
fashion's train in the world without, may gratefully
share.
These are the oases in the desert of New Orleans
life. Happy they who are as fortunate as myself in
finding them.
VI.
THE MUNICIPALITIES—THEIR ARCHITECTURE AND
PROMENADES.
STATISTICS of municipal law and policy are
W not very amusing or attractive, we know; but
to a pair of Manhattan eyes, accustomed in the
time of spring tides to bethink him of certain Al-
dermanic routines, and at all times from Brooklyn
heights or Trinity steeple, to regard New York as
one beautiful and systematic whole, it is very odd
to strain the vision over details of the legal divi-
sions and municipal governmental-plottings preva-
lent in the Crescent City. But in these days of
guide-books, gazetteers, and news, none need to be
more than reminded that New Orleans is divided
into three apparent cities, each of which, as far as
legislation goes, attends to its own business ; pro-
tects with due care its own respective Aldermanic
gods; dirties or cleans its own causeways; puts out
THE MUNICIPALITIES.
35
its own fires with its own reservoirs; fines its own
gar interference of neighbors. The electors of
each part only meet in harmony once in two years
to choose a supervising council (general vestrymen
of the parish) and a Mayor, whose gracious prerog-
ative it is to pour occasionally upon the troubled
waters of fraternal discord the oil of municipal ex-
pediency!
New Orleans has a Mayor! But the people
seem sadly afraid of him, and have made his office
very much like that of King Alfourite's prime min-
ister in Planché's burletta of Fortunio-
. --myou'll learn your duty in a minute,
'Tis but to hold a purse;
but there the analogy ends, for the purse in the
while the Mayor of New Orleans, on his seven
thousand a year, can study the mysteries of turtle,
regardless of expense.
One section of New Orleans, the First Municipa-
lity, is the old city, left to the tender mercies of the
French and Creole population; narrow, dark, and
dirty (meaning either their city or the people.)
One, in the Second Municipality, the new city;
with here a little of Boston, there a trifle of New
York, and some of Philadelphia, with something of
the rus in urbe so charmingly common to New
England towns. The third section a species of
half village, half city, (unmistakable in its French
36
THE MUNICIPALITIES—THEIR
Faubourg look,) is given over to the tender mercies
of the Dutch and Irish, and the usual accompa-
niments of flaxen-polled babies and flaxen-tailed
pigs.
A foreign tourist has observed that the democra-
tic character of American institutions is sufficiently
attested by our houses and edifices. Each pro-
perty owner possesses his peculiar ideas of archi-
tecture, and independently carries them into effect.
In no city is the latter more striking or absurder
than in these three sections of New Orleans. The
architectural tastes of every nation have been con-
sulted: perhaps in some part of them a Tartan or
Japanese sojourner might feel at home. On one
block will stand a row of buildings that might have
been transplanted bodily from Marseilles or Lyons;
their chambers filled with revolutionary memo-
ries. Upon another block a dozen straggling
dwellings remind one of Spain or Mexico—a pair
of dark eyes and a head of most picturesquely
uncombed hair here and there beheld wonderfully
assisting the illusion. In one part, a down easter
has faithfully copied in wood and plaster his old
homestead on the Kennebec or Penobscot Rivers.
In another, Kentucky taste (so independent and
yet so good humored) has attempted to satisfy the
longings of everybody by working up a dozen ar-
chitectural plans into one uncongenial whole,
erecting a sort of brick and timber monster that,
should they behold it-would drive "Downing" or
ARCHITECTURE AND PROMENADES. 37
" Thomas and Son” crazy. Piazzas, verandabs,
and Knickerbocker "stoeps” corner one another vi-
gilantly. Dropsical chimneys and lean smoke
vents harass each other tormentingly. Skylights
and dormer-windows ogle one another gapingly
And my word for it, with my eye full open to
the city roofs, the cats of New Orleans have fine
flirtations and mystical gambols o’nights.
The original city fathers of New Orleans (origi-
nal they certainly were) must have been born
poets and have afterwards deeply studied the clas-
sics. They named the streets in the mood in
which their subjects erected dwellings; consulting
everything and everybody. At the christenings,
mythology and history, conceit and whimsicality
stood sponsors; French Dukes and Princes were
given up to immortality upon corner signs; and
" Chartres," " Conti," " Burgundy," and “ Conde”
will never be forgotten in New Orleans so long as
black paint and iron spikes exist. In the same
manner the various saints came in for their share
of fame. So did many sinners. The early govern-
ors were not forgotten, as Carondelet, Villeré,
and Claiborne-streets attest. The Muses and the
Graces contributed their refinement to the swamp
infested districts of the Faubourg St. Marie. Oh
ye Gotham cavillers at the utilitarianism that has
numbered and lettered your streets and avenues,
what would you say to Nayades and Dryades and
38
THE MUNICIPALITIES—THEIR
Bacchus-street in the latter a Temperance Hall)
which run into Felicity-road, and are intersected
by Calliope and Clio and Erato and Thalia-streets,
begging pardon for the omission of Melpomene,
(who has a “raging canawl” in her midst, a stand-
ing theme for "Picayune” jokes,) or Terpsichore,
whose very curb-stones quadrille it as the oozing
mud beneath wells up and down on thawing
wintry mornings. When I add that the Indians,
and the sires of the Revolution, and the living
statesmen, were also remembered, I have said
enough to convince the most skeptical that the
original fathers of New Orleans were born poets.
And any one who has merely loafed about the
city will readily grant my assertion, that Phono-
graphy has before it a wonderful task to translate
unto Hoosier comprehension, at a first sight, the
mystical names that spectre-fy beholders at every
street-corner.
Descending from buildings and street-names, we
jump to the pavement and trottoirs. And they are
worthy of notice if only to appease the grumblings
of fastidious pedestrians who, on the polished flags
of Gotham or Philadelphia, are for ever fretting at
the wretched municipal economy of bad pavements.
Would that Dr. Alcott and Boss Richards, (whose
boots and shoes will ever stand in mammoth letters
on the pages of Knickerbocker history, kicking
aside all ungenerous sarcasm,) or time-honored ex-
street commissioner Ewen, were in New Orleans
ARCHITECTURE AND PROMENADES.
39
to behold its paves and trottoirs. · How the former
would prate of consumptions! The second of
cork-soles ; perhaps latterly of gutta percha. And
the last named of McAdam and Russ. Certes, as
these sidewalks now are, bunion doctors and corn
eradicators carry on a thriving trade, and fearlessly
paint up their names everywhere. Full three-
fourths of the walks are of ill-burnt brick, which,
on loose slimy soil, are treacherous feet supporters.
Even on sunny days the layers of mud aré ten
times worse in pedestrian effect than Gothamic or
Bostonian deposits of snow and ice; particularly
this in the Creole portions of the city, where the
inhabitants seem tainted with hydrophobia, and
grow spasmodic at the view of water. Each
alternate brick is a dandy trap. Down goes the
unsuspecting foot, and up flies on face and trowsers
too generous names. "To what end, alas! are boots
blackened, or patent leather and white stockings
sported in New Orleans in the winter-time ?
“Remember this, my boy," said an English
friend as he bade me adieu on the Levee, "the
authorities of New Orleans are in league with the
cabmen and shoemakers.”
Who knows!
I have often thought with pity of the New Or-
leans-ward exiled belles of Broadway, and Wash-
ington, and Chestnut-streets, so used to the peculiar
delights of their own promenades. In some rash
40
THE MUNICIPALITIES—THEIR
moment, when fate presented to their eyes the
dissolving view of a young gentleman in a tender
and impassioned attitude, whispering vows of love,
they forgot, while speaking the tremulous " yes,”
that their ardent lover was a New Orleans exile;
and little thought what a fate awaited their gaiter
boots and their bridal attire, when they shipped
themselves to the Crescent City. For trade in the
latter has put shopping on short commons, and its
extent is bounded by some half dozen narrow, ill-
paved streets.
And yet, on sunnydays in autumn and winter,
rich bonnets and feathers and dresses dare all the
perils of box-encumbered, omnibuses-bespattered
trottoirs, to plan and carry out the usual feminine
attacks upon the articles of dry-goods and millinery
so temptingly, tastefully, and liberally displayed
within the circuit of these half dozen blocks.
Alas! that the fairy pedestrians of Chartres and
Royal-streets should be so little noticed, and so
remorselessly nudged by the passing crowds of
men, whom the task-masters of "business” are
urging on from corner to corner, from store to
store, and from post-office, custom-house, and banks,
to and fro.
No! New Orleans has no promenade. The
existence of one as a lounge would be an anomaly.
And the magician who could give her one would
never dare the attempt. There are but few street
dandies to be moved in the matter; a mere sprink-
ARCHITECTURE AND PROMENADES.
41
ling among the scions of the lazy, luxurious Creole
race. Quel dommage! when a coat from first class
drapers stands your purse in fifty dollars, and your
trowsers are netted upon the tailor's books at fifteen
or twenty.
VII.
CLIMATE IN NEW ORLEANS.
MHE climate of New Orleans is a piece of mosaic-
I work among the climates of the earth; and
it defies the ingenuity of classification or consis-
tency of description. The wind and the sun
in New Orleans are "to one thing constant
never," but always in warfare. It would seem,
upon thinking upon it, that every emigrant from
the different latitudes, zones, and tropics of this
terrestrial ball, brought with him thitherward a bit
of his own home climate by way of a souvenir;
and that with the collected bits an involuntary
joint-stock climate company has gone into ope-
ration; which said company, however often it
liquidates, always recovers again, and continues
operations more vigorously than ever.
At New Orleans you may often walk beneath
orange-trees “whose tempting fruit and fragrant
43
foliage wave aggravatingly in a chilling blast,
while your own body corporate is wrapped in a
great coat alarmingly suggestive of a Rocky
Mountain clothing store. Or you may often put
a red nose (more frosty than jolly) to a rose
that grows in an open garden in the wintry air;
whilst the violets blooming at your feet alongside
the flower-bed you pass shiveringly, agree admira-
bly in the colour with your blue lips. The “bon-
vivants” of the Picayune newspaper enjoy their
vaunted salad and green peas by a blazing Febru-
ary fire, obligingly remembering the while the
health of him of the Boston Post, to whom is
reserved the discontented luxury of reading the
account of the gastronomical doings of his south-
ern contemporaries. The iced juleps imbibed
upon one December evening are succeeded by the
grateful hot punches of the succeeding evening;
indeed often the two may sit cosily upon the same
sideboard to induce the exposure of individual
thermometric feeling. And Boreas and the Sala-
mander hold levees upon alternate days.
The months move along in diversified proces-
sion; fantastic as the reviews of your village pa-
rade days. January, who comes in with merry
voice, and who in some latitudes is as dignified
and haughty as a Russian prince, is at New Or-
leans as capricious and teasing as a village flirt:
now demanding your overshoes and now your
pumps; now asking your Blucher trowsers, and
44
CLIMATE IN NEW ORLEANS.
next bringing your nankeens from their last au-
tumn resting place in your chamber armoire. Feb-
ruary is spiteful, and whether she bite them or
burn them, hangs doggedly at your ears. March
is the month for the trial of patience; you nose a
balmy day for a week before you feel its breezes
upon your temples; and sometimes try in vain for
the same period of time to forget a damp muggy
day, whose reminiscences hang about your system
like some goading wrong. But April! ah, a glo-
rious month; and true to her poetic character.
January had his ducks: fat, and juicy, delicious
every way, whether you stewed them or roasted
them or smothered them in pastry for a game pie;
but April with her pompano (a fish of an Indian
name) draws ducks from the memory of your
palate as soothingly as Parmly draws a pet tooth
from its much loved socket. May is like many a
lady whom you and I, reader, have often met; she
is cool on first acquaintance, (perhaps she thinks
her sister, April, has been too familiar with her
gentle goodness,) but gradually warms to your
affection. June is the month for your amateur in
meteorology, the month for consultations with the
thermometer broiling on your piazza. If it hang
high, and you, like myself, are a short man, you
must needs eye the mercury on tiptoe, for it's up,
up among the doubling twenties. And yet after
walking in the sun a bit, to return and find the
mercury raging at only 90°, a feeling of disap-
CLIMATE IN NEW ORLEANS.
45
pointment has you fast, that so much heat should
come from an "only 90° day." I have known
some silly enough to quarrel with the heat mea-
surer, and get themselves where they would have
the mercury, at fever heat.
When July comes, New Orleans takes breath.
Her streets are relieved by the absence of some
thousands of her winter population, who in their
disappearing, work problems in numeration; at
first going by units; then by tens; next by
hundreds; and if under the favor of the Board of
Health an epidemic get a public announcement,
the leaving is by thousands. At ten o'clock of a
July morning the sun's rays drop upon the city
with a power as if the atmosphere was all filled
with concave lenses of which New Orleans was
the focus. Then the crossing Canal-street (a levia-
than of a causeway in its breath) becomes a labor
worthy the reputation of the fire-king. Grass
which grew prolificly upon the pavements when
they had ceased to ring with the continuous clatter
of business heels, has turned yellow and sere. Old
residents assume an attire quite the thing for a
troupe of genteel model artists; and brave the
heat in loosely flowing trowsers, with bust as vest-
less, and throat as stockless as the bust and throat
of your sailor dandy. Unlucky cits attempt their
first summer-walk with a step and cast of coun-
tenance betraying a mind preyed upon by anxiety;
some with umbrellas raised (heat shielders ;) others
46
CLIMATE IN NEW ORLEANS.
walking leisurely along, endeavoring to derive
some passing benefit from every little shadow cast
by balconies and lamp posts upon the sun's re-
flected path. The thermometer is sulky; so are
the vexed Ganymedes at the soda fountains (Gott-
schalk, thou prince of druggists, a passing tribute
to your carbon ;) the drawers of the gaseous liquid
momently showing signs of giving out. The day
draws languidly to a close; the sun retires from
an Italian sky; and long before the evening gun
has boomed from the Place des Armes, there
springs from the Gulf a delicious breeze which is
elysianlike to breathe. Then how the ice cream
saloons resound with clattering spoons. St. Charles-
street is a garden of mint you'd think, to snuff
its atmosphere, although at all the bars the wor-
shipers unto Bacchus are "few and far between"
compared with their number a month or two back
when ale and cocktails “were the cheese and no-
thin' else.” The parlors of the permanents open
to the Caribee-scented breezes; and the frontward
piazzas, and the sidewalks even, assume by the aid
of chairs and muslin dresses a decidedly social
appearance.
August and September are like James's novels
-continuations of what immediately preceded
them. October polishes up and oils the hinges of
the city gates for Nevember to open and admit the
returning exiles, who by December have fairly set-
tled down for another season of varied business
and pleasure.
Q
CLIMATE IN NEW ORLEANS.
47
The summer weather of New Orleans can show
heat, it is true; but paradoxical as it may seem, it
has its charms beside. An “old inhabitant” once
expressed his eloquent surprise in this wise :-
“When we have the finest weather the people all
go out of town; where of all the atmospheres
breathed enjoyingly by mortal man can you find
one more agreeable than that around us of a July
evening ?”
"Ah! a July evening !"
" True, the day is hot from nine to three.”
“Hot! A furnace is a kitchen-oven to Canal-
street.”
. “The remedy is easy; stay indoors till night;
or if you must pedestrianize, a half pound um-
brella will see you through. And even should
business call you out, the Gulf-ward wafted eve-
ning breeze will make you quite forget the morn-
ing.??
If one could only get over the morning heat, the
scarcely a cloud obscures the brilliancy of the blue
canopy through which the sun moves in dignified
splendor; or a haze deadens the pleasant glimmer-
ings of the “sentinel stars” upon the quiet night
enveloped city. It is in the midst of this pevuliar
weather, however, that "yellow Jack” so briskly
drives his death-dealing chariot. And many an
48
CLIMATE IN NEW ORLEANS.
unacclimated sojourner has the summer climate
lured to destruction. I have often walked through
the streets of an August evening, knowing that
scarcely an house which I passed but sheltered
patients sick with yellow fever; and wondered
where in an atmosphere so balmy, and so soothing
to body and mind, lurked the invisible but certain
spirit of disease.
Your quiet man with a fine bump of mirthful-
ness under the favor of Fowler and Wells's digits,
enjoys with infinite zest the beholding a fat negro
of a July day, and again in January, when the
north wind takes a long leap from Baffin's Bay,
and wanders up and down the streets of New Or-
leans. In July, perchance at luncheon time, he
may be seen at the door of some cotton press
stretched full length upon a bale directly in the
sun, snoring away with a diapason truly musical;
and if ever the terms “basking in the sun" be
capable of correct and telling application, they will
find that application in the attitude of the sleeping
Ethiopian. Of a January frosty day he is bone
the summary exactions of Johannas Fraust, that
merry enemy of your Knickerbocker pipe-smoker
in days of yore, and who during the past quarter
century takes occasional lodgings in southern lati-
tudes.
And you have never seen a fire hugged until
CLIMATE IN NEW ORLEANS.
49
you behold a violet lipped Creole before a blazing
grate of Pittsburg coal. When he snuffs the frost
of a “now and then” evening, even his beloved
Opera at the Orleans Theatre cannot tempt him to
his loge.
VIII.
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
M Y word for it, that if Professor Espy would
Ni take a front room on the second floor of any
frame house in Marais-street, in the First Munici-
pality of New Orleans, and live within it six
months; or hire an office near the corner of Poy-
dras and St. Charles-streets, within a minute's bail
of Sol. Smith's box-office or the cracked trumpet
of the itinerating circus opposite ; he would ac-
quire a lasting disgust of rain water, and leaving
his theory of winds, clouds, and storms, betake
himself to shingle-whittling, or any other Yankee
recreation which is as soothing to troubled nerves.
I have been upon the Catskills when the roof of
the Mountain-House reverberated with the peltings
of the rain, and when my spasmodic dreams were
crowded by floating visions of drowning men and
images of diluvian arks. I have worn out several
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES. 51
umbrellas in my day; and overshoe-shod I have
paddled the causeways of various cities; and so
seen something of rain. But I never realized the
capacity of the clouds for water until “going
through a course” of the wet season in New Or-
leans. When there was little squeamishness, or
modesty, or gentlemanly consideration in the rain-
drops. When the latter rarely gave due and gen-
erous notice of intention to commence action.
When small glimpses of hope for an early cessa-
tion during progress were afforded. When the
rain was now dogged, obstinate and persevering;
and now the rapidly succeeding showers charged
the earth like reserve after reserve of cavalry in a
battle.
The soil of the Crescent City, in the driest time
of the seasons, is filled with humidity (and this to
its utmost capacity, at two feet from the surface ;)
and under favor of these aforementioned showers,
soon overflows. Shunning the river, the choking
gutters send their burdens swamp-ward, littering
the angles of pavement with clumps of cotton and
wool, heads of barrels, hogsheads sometimes;
broken paper-boxes, bits of pasteboard, twine and
bagging rope; all which the ever-thirsty swamp
licked, in course of time, into its capacious maw.
If you are a stranger in the city, and the clouds
have liberally dispensed their favors all the night;
and all unconscious to yourself the monotony of
the falling rain has beguiled you into a late nap,
52
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
without, and then "to breakfast with what appe-
tite you may," you have queer sights to look at.
And queerer ones, if business or curiosity draw
you out.
Pedestrians are standing on divers corners in a
dreadful state of uncertainty, looking gloomily
from their boots to the surging floods before them;
now and then consulting watches, making feints to
jump, and balking; until urged on by the still
more dreadful visions of protested bills, undunned
accounts, and lost bargains, “accoutred as they
were plunging in." Astonished eastern men
gazing from office windows, and turning to their
Bibles (if any they have) for statistics respecting
Noah's ark. Piano strumming misses in the by-
streets are executing "Home, sweet Home” (how
soothingly the melody vibrates the out-door air.)
Valiant bank runners and collecting clerks wading
(apparently unconcerned) through Canal-street,
jostling nicely-poised umbrellas, or skilfully navi-
gating them (aerial machines) about the tall heads
and wide-brimmed, hats (the latter sometimes
knocked off with provoking ease,) and low balco-
nies, and projecting signs, and nuisances of awn-
ing posts. Here and there fat men who are vic-
tims of circumstance are seen with large umbrellas
---canopies, morelike, of silk and whalebone-in
narrow streets, caught and brought hard up by a
pile of bricks or a stack of boxes. The unem-
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
53
ployed cab-horses everywhere are in melancholy
attitudes winking and blinking, martyr-like from
behind their cosy headstalls, and smoking vigor-
ously the passers-by. The drivers with oilskin
capes, (as if one needed to be so cruelly reminded
of the state of the weather, standing under drip-
ping corners, and dexterously dividing the pour-
ing streams about them with their whip lashes; or
peering, aggravatingly, from the back seats of
their vehicles through the leathern curtains.
Anon, the earth would seem tired of "staying
herself with flagons," and as if by telegraphic di-
rection the heavens would suspend their rain-drops.
Then the air would become chilly, and the ascend-
ing moisture hang in fog as low as the lamp posts;
the chimney-tops, and the St. Charles' Dome, and
the tops of the flag-staffs skulk in a misty ob-
scurity.
And again, when brisk allusions to that clear-
ing-up shower had circulated through the city, the
rain would once more descend in torrents, and set
at defiance all deductions and calculations of me-
teorology.
I never take up a New Orleans newspaper, and
read from the price current of the day the words,
“in consequence of the weather yesterday out-door
operations were suspended, and sales of produce
were limited," but I know directly that the said
“yesterday” was a day like the one above de-
scribed.
54
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
7
I often roar with laughter, even in my bluish,
dumpish moments, at thoughts of a ludicrous scene
once witnessed by me, an incident of a rainy day;
when as one may well imagine, the slightest incident
is worthy of being booked, (for a rarity,) like one of
Prince Albert's jokes. The water was six inches
deep on the corner of St. Charles and Canal-streets,
and my pedestrianism was at a stand still in a
fruiterer's shop. Cab-horses were splashing and
spattering along like country nags in shallow mea-
dow creeks; and timid clerks in patent leather
boots (caught untimely with them on by a bit of
deceptive sunshine at early morning) waded shiver-
ingly by, looking grimly at the “Musson granite
buildings" opposite, that just as grimly looked back
at them. The stands of the fruiterer on the curb
(the shelves running from awning post to awning
post) were filled with high-priced oranges and
watermelons (sunny May, by good rights, reader.)
A knot of lazy negro boys on the opposite corner
showed their white teeth on the black prospect
about them, and wistfully eyed the palatable mer-
chandise across the surging currents. Presently a
cabman turning the corner, deceived by the over-
flowing gutter, drove a wheel upon the curb, and
with the lurch of his vehicle turned over some
shelves of the fruit stand. In a moment the minia-
ture maelstrooms and gulf-streams all about had
caught in their embraces hundreds of oranges and
scores of watermelons, that went floating towards
RAIN V
55
AND MOSQUITOES.
the swamp. The fruiterer was paralysed; an
Italian, too, and Monsieur Cabbey within tongue
garcons opposite. The knot quickly untied and
plunged in hot pursuit of the escaping fruit; and
with a strict observance of the laws of political eco-
nomy regulating the division of labor; since no
two seized the same melon or clutched the same
orange. ' A group of boys on an upper corner also
wished to share the spoils; and a struggle followed
their arrival, with a probability of soon testing the
swimming qualities of all the party. This aroused
the owner of the commodities, fast becoming, in a
legal sense, flotsam and jetsam; and the now en-
raged fruiterer rushed after the predatory bands.
But they had two blocks of flooded causeway the
start, and much of the spoils was already appro-
priated. Thinking more of punishment than of
his property, he caught an orange at every step
and hurled it at the retreating enemy, to the aston-
ishment of quiet lookers-on from drawing room
windows, until at last, what with the captures and
his own reckless expenditure of ammunition, he
was bankrupt in melons and oranges.
The latter, if there is any value in the old say.
ing regarding stolen fruit, were sweet morsels to
many a palate in the Faubourgs that night.
Of course, where such a swampy soil and so
much rain is found, that eighth plague to modern
56
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
Egyptians, the mosquito tribe (insect, and not
Indians) are to be discovered without great scru-
tiny. Your mosquito is a sad drawback in the sun-
ny days and pleasant nights of a New Orleans ex-
ile. The mosquito! whose bark is perhaps more
disagreeable than his bite.
The month of March in the Crescent City, whe-
ther he comes in lamb-like or lion-like, brings mos-
quitoes, which by April have completely colonized
bedrooms, drawing-rooms, and saloons; nay, “all
out-doors” besides. And of two classes. One for
night duty, one for the tasks of daylight; both
equally systematic in all the details of their opera-
tions. When twilight deepens, the class that have
slept all day in obscure retreats behind curtains,
and in wardrobes, and in the shadows of furniture,
sally forth and dance about with a noise like the
humming of a boarding school of tops. Then is
reading a suspended recreation. Old gloves are a
treasure. The presence of a veteran cigar-maker
is a prize. Fans are a luxury. Woe to that per-
son who becomes immersed in thought, or inte-
rested in conversation, or overcome by drowsiness
in exposed situations. In ten minutes' time mos-
quitoes have duly marked him as a rash man; and
on the morrow his mirror will become suggestive
of small-pox; and his cologne bottle and flesh
brush will find active employment in the duties of
the toilet.
One retires to rest, and, with as much of the
rapidity of lightning as can be employed by ner-
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
vous fingers, draws his bar of netting and duly tucks
it in; forming a wall secure against the assaults
and mining and sapping operations of the whole
mosquito army. Behind this he lies until morning,
and can sing to his heart's content" Beneath cool
shades reposing" with an orchestral accompaniment
whose only fault is its monotony.
There is much of science to be displayed in get-
ting beneath this netting of the bed so that none
of the hungry swarms accompany you. I found
one side, thus drawing thitherward every insect in
the room; and then making a rapid march for the
other side escape them thence into the snug quar-
ters of your bed. Or taking a corner seat for a
few moments as if about to read; and when the
wily insects are beguiled towards you make the
same rapid march for the further corner of the bed.
Perhaps often there will be a few mosquitoes who
have already obtained an entrance, (admitted to the
bar under some new constitution and without an
examination,) after ingeniously plotting and plan-
ing through the daylight like the burglars they are.
They must be carefully assassinated, while some
good friend without or your body-servant holds
the light in assistance of the tedious search that
ensnared. In default of the friend or the body
servant, a little experience, and an attentive ear,
will make you a sharp-shooter even in the shade
4*
58
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
of night, as, guided by the humming of the enemy,
you track him to execution.
Old jokers will tell you of mosquitoes who con-
temptuously spurn bars and netting; and who will
crib your bed of straw or even mattress hair, and
suck you (julep wise) from without. But this is
scan. mag. against the whole insect tribe, and Por-
ter of the “Picayune” should long ago have been
assessed in damages for the story.
Cunning and sagacity are eminent characteristics
of the mosquitoes of New Orleans. Those who in
the daylight most do congregate, know a cane-
backed chair a room's length off. They can detect
a slight break of leather in your boots as soon as
brought within their reach. They are sworn ene-
mies to holes in the elbows or short arm coat-cuffs;
or low shoes; or bare necks; or gaping shirt frills.
And a man in their company need well examine
his hat before tipping his head with it, or combing
and brushing of hair will become rather an exer-
cise than a mere duty of the toilet.
But joking and metaphor aside, the mosquitoes
of New Orleans deserve a distinct niche in the
temple of its history. They are parts and parcels
of its population; coming between the negroes and
the mules in nuisance valuation; and far before all
men, women, and children in point of numbers.
They are differently sized, and differently shaped,
and differently armed, and differently aged, and
differently educated, according as they are in diffe-
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
59
rent sections of the city. The First Municipality
possesses its mosquito denizens who have become
torpid, sluggish and lazy. Then there are the
mosquitoes of the Second Municipality, who are
active, energetic, enterprising; who get fat on bor-
rowed capital; who serve and receipt their own
bills; who are always active and vigilant. Some
of them are dainty, and associate only with fat
people whose nightmares are based upon turtle
steaks and oyster pies. Others have a promiscuous
appetite, and cling to drayman, hoosier, and banker
with equal tenacity. Some are deficientin instinct,
and suffer, or die unknown and unregretted in
damp corners of closets and on dusty window
panes, while their more shrewd and crafty brethren
get fat and audacious. Some live through many
seasons; seemingly smelling a frosty day twelve
hours off, and duly housing in some cast off gar-
ment which prudent observation has taught them
will not be called into active service; or seeking
the friendly aid of a warm chimney corner whither
no dust cloth or broom of vigilant housemads may
track them. Some have eyes keen as their bills,
(these are on the day watch, and are old the mo-
ment they come into this breathing world, to judge
from the greyness of their moustache and hair)
and will watch from a corner of the room until
you are absorbed in reading or writing or in reflec-
tion, then making a sudden dash, lance you, take
a long pull, (like a thirsty man at an iced ale,) and
60
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
withdraw to a rumination; whilst you are left to
scratch and rub at leisure the small sized mountains
raised upon the place of their visitation by the
poison left behind. These do not expose them-
selves to assassination; but are wary and watchful.
Speaking a la militaire, if you are eyes right, they
have left; if you are eyes front, they fall on your
rear; if your eyes are all over, they are nowhere.
If you strive at any time to clutch or imprison
them in the closing palms, you will find that, Mac-
beth-like, you had but clutched an airy and unsub-
stantial vision.
Apropos of mosquito diplomatics. A friend of
mine with his wife, came to New Orleans for a few
days in the month of December, preparatory to
steaming across the Gulf to Havanna in the
Steamship Alabama, then in the trade. They
'put up' (so the phrase goes for 'lodging' in the
South and West) at the St. Charles Hotel; and
the first evening of their arrival was spent by me
in their company. I left with the promise to come
early in the morning for a short tour among the
lions.
The water for my breakfast-eggs the following
day was quite refractory in bubbling up to boiling
point, and I was, therefore, late at the hotel, ex-
pecting to find my impetuous friend pedestriana-
ting the gentlemen's parlor in an agony of impa-
tience. But I walked through the various apart-
ments without finding him. "Perhaps he is tired
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
of waiting, and so gone,” thought I; "I will in-
quire."
“Ah, number 25 is in the smoking room, sir-
ah stop-No. 25 that was—No. 25 is now No.30-
couldn't stand the click of the billiard balls near
him-No. 25 has not come out yet," said the good
natured and voluble clerk whose mind was wedded
to the now involuntary habit of classing ladies and
gentlemen by the rooms they filled.
“Beg pardon sir," said a waiter, " 25 had break-
fast sent up to them,-beg pardon again sir, but
acted very queerly too, and took the trays in them-
selves through the crack of the door.”
"Parbleu," ejaculated I, “they must be sick-
let me run up."
“ Jack my boy-beg Clara's pardon for looking
in; but are you sick," I cried through the keyhole.
“Come in sans ceremonie," answered the full-
chested voice of my friend. He was not sick at
all events.
I went in but immediately started back!
“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed out my friend as he sat
let me bleu," the crack
on the centre table; dont be frightened: it's ra-
ther amusing than otherwise."
“Now Jack," pouted his usually lively wife, “I'm
sure it's a horrid adventure; worse than encounters
with African beasts.”
I was gazing speechlessly at their countenances,-
62
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
which from the hair line of the forehead to the
point of the chin, looked like bushes full of half
ripe black-berries.
"Ha, ha, ha," shouted my friend, "I'll bet a
quarter you've the same idea as my wife's maid,
after merely looking in upon us—I'll bet a quarter
he thinks we're getting the small pox,” he con-
tinued, turning to his wife who slightly relaxed
her pout as the cheerful hilarity of her spouse
resounded through the apartment.
"It certainly looks like it," said I.
"We're horrid frights I know," added his wife
rather despairingly of tone, "and that's the reason
we are not down to breakfast at the ordinary."
"But it aint small-pox,” chuckled my friend,
“it's—it's—it's mosquitoes !"
I took a step or two forward and glanced in at
the adjoining bed-room. There was no netting to
the bedsteads!
“Why Jack-Clara—my good friends where
is your "bar;' this is unpardonable neglect from
the house; I mimom.
.
“There—there; be easy, don't blame the wrong
passenger, it's all our own stupidity in not calling
for some one to hang it up. Poor unsophisticated
Yankees that we are-coming from a place where
naturalists for a curiosity—what did we know
about mosquitoes and netting and all that; and
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
63
the thing has been laying on a chair by the bed-
side all night. But I must tell you all about it.
we first retired we thought there was a curious
hum in the air; presently the buzzing came nearer.
My wife had the first bite; (as we used to say in
our fishing days;) and Clara you know is exces-
sively neryous with the very idea of bugs in any
shape. Soon the truth flashed on us. It was
mosquitoes! I got up and struck a light. Clara
joined forces and at them we went with slippers
and boots. I suppose we killed some hundreds or
less—the rascals biting us all the time--when we
rather became exhausted. Clara proposed opening
the window and driving them out with napkins
a womanish plan you know of de-parlour—ating
flies. So we opened the window and slashed about
with towels at a vigorous rate. Miscalculating
mortals that we were: there was an "army of
reserve” waiting outside and in they made; and
down come the window sash ex necessitate. We
retired again; and again came the buzzing and the
biting. One stout mosquito regularly waylaid me
like a highwayman; the light we kept burning
and I eyed him for half an hour. Now he would
come one side and then dash at the other; then
feigned to withdraw only to resume attack. It
was doze-buz-bite-thrash-slap—and scratch
until day light, and here we are what we are. I
suppose we're in for all day? Shall we not frighten
64
RAIN AND MOSQUITOES.
everybody and set all the mothers in the streets
So much for a night of unsophistication with the
New Orleans mosquitoes.
So much, I repeat, for rain and mosquitoes in
New Orleans. But I advise you, reader, neither
on the faith of my representation (true as gospel
though they are) nor on those of any one else, to
throw either topic in the teeth of your true blooded
Crescent citizen.
He rather likes them than otherwise; and calls
them agreeable peculiarities of climate, as your
Gothamite speaks of mud, and your Bostonian of
zero weather or easterly winds over Cambridgeport
bridge.
IX.
YELLOW FEVER.
TON'T shrug your shoulders, reader, at the head-
U ing of these paragraphs; for I am not upon
the threshold of any physiological details; I am
not commencing a medical treatise which would be
valuable in its way to the "London Lancet,” or to
various Journals of the Faculty which moulder in
drug smelling laboratories, or journey with emi-
grants upon trunk covers; I have no intention of
boring the literary world with a diagnosis of the
disease which accompanies cholera and plague in
the catalogue so often pondered by nervous. people.
But having had an encounter with “Yellow Jack,"
I deem it not ungenerous upon my part to say a
few things about him; especially as he is at times
no unimportant sojourner of the Crescent City.
Not that I know his birth and origin; not that
I am in possession of full particulars regarding his
66
YELLOW FEVER.
nurture or education; not that I am intimately ac-
quainted with his domestic habits ; not that I have
phrenologized him and discovered his most secret
characteristics. Alas! (the interjection is thrown
in at the thought of my inability to convert into
waste paper the pamphlets which have been pub-
lished to prove or disprove that the breath of Yel-
low Jack was infectious and contagious—one or
both—and to be shunned like the lepers who shiv-
ered in olden time around the wall of Jerusalem)
alas! I say, I cannot settle the many questions
which have hitherto puzzled the modern disciples
of Hippocrates, on this subject; and which have
caused as great a disagreement among the members
of the faculty as a heavy meat pie at a medical
dinner.
Throughout the winter in New Orleans the
“ fever topic" rather drags in conversational circles.
To the “old inhabitants” it is an old story; to the
unacclimated it is like allusions to that first pro-
missory note due six months hence which figures
on the books of a young tradesman. But when
cloaks and thick coats disappear, and pedestrians
contemptuously kick about the stray lumps of coal
occasionally met with ; and the suns of latter May
crisp the tops of new carriages, discussions upon
the fever are agitated. Will it come this season ?
Do you stay and weather it? Does Dr. Stone or
Dr. Kennedy go to the Virginia springs this sum-
mer?-et cetera, ad infinitum, are questions rife
YELLOW FEVER.
67
everywhere. The yearly members of the Board
of Health become characters for ocular interest as
they walk about the streets. Their nods and
winks and various gestures are scrutinized with
great care; and should any of them be suffering
under dyspepsia or any other complaint productive
of a long face and sour speech, an article on Yel-
low Fever is sure to get into the Gazettes, either
editorially or by favor of some “X. Y. Z," corres-
pondent.
July comes, and perhaps a "case" is announced
at the hospital. The very timid have long since
left the city; a few fearful swaggerers have re-
mained and now take the alarm. Trunks are
being packed everywhere, and the steamboat lists
anxiously scanned, when the Secretary of the Board
of Health picks out the most humane looking quill
in his escrutoire, and says to the public in very
readable type the next day, “only sporadic." Ah!
sporadic; and the temporary alarm subsides. One,
two, three, four, five cases in a day soon occur, but
still no more alarm. “They are only sporadic!
The Board of Health says so; the sexton's book
says so; the sun shines as heartily on the St.
Charles' Dome every morning; why should I
fear ?” cries the shoe-quaking citizen as he sips his
morning coffee. Very fine logic all this, but one
naturally asks what difference does it make whe.
ther one dies sporadically or otherwise !
· Perhaps soon the deaths increase, and the Board
68
YELLOW FEVER.
of Health are compelled to hang out their news-
paper banners with the word epidemic very
conspicuous thereon. The word is a perfect
sesame. At its pronunciation, the bar-rooms be-
come almost deserted; the jolly bank-runners carry
their funds fearlessly under their arms, for the
pickpockets are not to be found; merchants read
the papers behind their counters, or write letters to
their absent wives; the clerks, most of them of the
unacclimated, talk over the subject and display
unheard of learning upon matters of medical inter-
est; the theatres are closed, except, perhaps, the
little National hard by the egg and coffee woman
in the Poydras market; the steamboats at the
Levee may be counted at a glance; the shipping
look like November forests; the papers are barren
of domestic news; and the arrivals of produce and
of strangers at the hotels are few indeed. Girod-
street, and Julia-street, and the New Shell road,
and Circus-street, and Rue de Conti are dotted
through the day with hearses and carriages on their
way to the Protestant Yard, or the Cypress Grove,
or the Cemetery of St. Louis. An ominous look-
ing cart stands at the door of the Charity Hospital.
Physicians' gigs rattle around. The list of daily
interments head the editorials in each gazette,
as being the most interesting item for home and
interior subscribers.
Any one who after a “hard day's work" of.
mental labor in midsummer, has, at an evening
YELLOW FEVER.
69
jollification finished three bottles of iced champagne
and retired to bed in a badly ventilated apart-
ment; and who can recall the sensations of his
mind and body the ensuing day, can well imagine
how one feels under an attack of yellow fever. A
civil war is raging in the stomach, while the tem-
ples and the pulse beat a tatoo for the engagement.
The head feels as if filled with molten lead which
is burning the eyeballs. The back is like an
unhinged door. You seem infatuated with a desire
to immortalize yourself by a discovery of perpetual
motion, and influenced thereby toss from side to
side like a rudderless vessel off the banks of
Newfoundland. Daylight becomes a nuisance.
The most fascinating of tongues loses its eloquence.
Ice is the greatest of luxuries, and you would not
sell the, bit which covers your eyes (napkin
enveloped) for place or money. The blankets
around you awaken the most profound disgust for
everything woollen. If you are a nervous man
you sigh; if a stout man you groan. You can no
more sleep than can a man after imbibing six cups
of green tea at a New England sociable.
the degrees of favor his physician enjoys at the shop
of the apothecary. If he have a nephew or a
cousin in the drug line, the patient is a dead
man from the second day; if he have read Dr.
thinker upon medical science, supplying its de-
70
YELLOW FEVER.
ficiencies, improving its crudities, and softening its
extravagancies by the results of observation, the
patient is, probably, a confirmed convalescent the
fifth day.
A convalescent! The mere being prostrate with
fever—with flushed face, and baked eyeballs, and
stiff back-iş the least item in the disease. The
getting well is the most hazardous and the most
annoying. To have a strong craving appetite, but
a frame so weak it trembles with the raising of a
hand; to hear the delicacies of the season cried by
each passing marchande fresh, like her stock, from
the St. Mary market, or the environs of Carollton,
but to know they are one and all tabooed articles;
to hear the rattling of knives, and forks, and spoons,
in adjoining rooms at well furnished tables, but be
compelled to supply all the adjuncts by your ex-
cited imagination; to inhale the savor from neigh-
boring kitchens, as your classical memories whisper
of Tantalus: to think of the bills of fare you have
run your eye over in times past, as you find your-
self restricted to a wine-glass of ale per diem, fed
out in hourly spoonfuls, and crackers in meat broth
given you as sparingly; these are the real annoy-
ances of the yellow fever.
And this not for a day; but perhaps for a
week; the while, nervous friends and timid rela-
tives fill your gaping mouth, or dim your hungry
eye, with stories of unfortunate convalescents to
whom an untimely apple, or an injudicious beef-
YELLOW FEVER.
71
steak, have given the fatal relapse. The man who
possesses a small modicum of self-denial will fare
very badly in the hands of Yellow Jack, even if he
survive the prostration.
That which renders the presence of yellow fever
in the city, and its rod of power, as laid upon
patient backs, doubly disagreeable, is the almost
invariable accompaniment of unsuspiciously fine
weather; clear skies, and cooling night breezes.
To have a pestilence brooding in the common sum-
mer weather of New Orleans, is like suffering a
malicious drowning in the waters of Lake George,
near its most romantic neighborhoods.
Shortly after my recovery from an early visita-
tion of the pestilential epidemic, it was my wont of
pleasant August evenings, to saunter about the
city, and examine the various characteristics of
summer population; and compare the differences
in the look of streets and houses then, with the ap-
pearance they wore a few months back. - In the
Second Municipality, dozens of houses, side by side,
would scarcely manifest signs of inmate life. The
closed shutters; the dusty pavement; the silent
rooms; spoke forcibly of disease and flight. And
thus, in walking through St. Charles-street, after
passing the beautiful Lafayette Square, (if ever a park
within city boundaries preaches eloquently upon
the delights of fresh air and greenwood shade, this
square, put upon the business vetebræ of the city,
discourses thereon most forcibly,) it was something
72
YELLOW FEVER.
agreeably noticeable to always find one bijou of a
cottage open, as in the merry spring time; the
parlors, barely above the street level, exposed to the
evening breeze; and cheerful voices and merry
tones, and often pleasing music issuing forth. Oc-
casionally, too, the graceful form of a sprightly girl
sat by the half-curtained window, looking out into
the almost deserted street, while every passer-by
who trod the flag-stones before her, seemed to catch
a lighter step as he went on. Curiosity learned
for me, that she was the daughter of a physician-
motherless, and an only child. Her father, an
adventurer, and an enthusiastic apostle of his art.
He had chosen New Orleans for his abode, leaving
behind a happy home in an eastern State, and many
a sad memory connected with it. He was studying
the progressing epidemic, and his daughter would
not desert him. And there, visited sometimes by
summer residents, they lived on watching the time
when they would have to conduct the usual en-
counter with disease.
One night I found the shutters closed: they are
gone, I said, to pass away an evening at some
friend's residence. The next night the same de-
serted look. My thoughts were ominous, and from
a neighbor's servant, I learned that both father and
daughter were ill, “but not badly taken, they
would soon be well."
Both were ill together. They had not thought
of this perhaps. The father counted on ministering
YELLOW FEVER.
73
to a sick daughter-his tenderest patient—the
daughter hoped to have been a nurse to the father,
and so discharge the pious offices of love.
The tale is soon told. The father lived—the
daughter died. And the tears start into my eyes
even now as I think of the look that father's coun-
tenance wore, as a week afterwards I met him
slowly walking through a retired street; a blasted
future, and a regretful past, clouding the present
which should have been so bright. It is but a
simple tale from a class whose numbers are too
by night, and wasteth at noonday.
LAW AND GOSPEL.
TF ever the Shade of Justinian makes a tour to
I new countries, it is my humble opinion that he
often visits New Orleans; dodging up and down
the various narrow stairways in Exchange alley
from wide-mouthed Canal-street to the lockjaw
pathway in front of the St. Louis Hotel (said path-
way being termed by industrious painters on cor-
ner side-boards, “ Rue”,) or skulking in and out
Royal-street; up which and in all which are found
in the shape of lawyers and notaries more zealous
followers of the Civillans than the most enthusiastic
Saxon would like to shake Magna Charta at. It is
my bumble opinion also that the said shade takes
a strange delight in climbing the flights of steps
in the sepulchral-looking building adjoining the
Cathedral of St. Louis, wherein justice is homoeo-
LAW AND GOSPEL.
75
heterogeneous crowds of Americans, Germans,
founded foreigners” in general, who in the capa-
cities of sheriffs, clerks, advocates, clients, witnesses,
jurors, hangers on, and outsiders, assist in peopling
the court-house of New Orleans, and putting in
solemn motion the treadmills of her code of prac-
tice. That the said shade furthermore recreates
himself at times in running his eyes over the
various legal libraries, and in poring over the
various legal briefs in the offices of New Orleans
lawyers. For he sees that on the banks of the
Mississippi in a land his ambitious countrymen
never dreamed of in their proudest days of con-
quering pomp and pride of power, his law and his
legal doctrines flourish in all their original beauty
and vigor; that the sublime teachings of the Pan-
dects school the operations of the most enterprising
commercial community in the New World-and
this an hundred years after Blackstone had stolen
soul and body from Domat the mode of arranging
a legal treatise, which Justinian had himself ori-
ginated, and which has been the pride of your
true-blooded Anglo Saxon lawyer for scores of
years.
. There are very few but who are aware that the
doctrines and practice of the civil law are the
principal ingredients in the system of Louisiana
jurisprudence; and that these doctrines, after being
76
LAW AND GOSPEL.
naturalized in French and Spanish courts, were
respectably dressed and so placed under the pro-
tection of the American flag by the labors of
Messrs. Livingston, Derbigny, and Moreau. :
And it is somewhat singular that the great
majority of legal gentlemen who win the hearts of
New Orleans jurymen and soften the prejudices of
New Orleans judges, were educated under the
common law; and like conscientious proselytes,
having their fingers and thumbs knowingly im-
pressed with the pages of Domat, Pothier, Merlin,
and Duranton, will find for you in the tables of
civil law the origin of trial by jury, of remedial
equity, and various other matters of legal lore
which are often called the exclusive property of
Saxon jurists.
The legal profession has been, and ought always
to be, a lucrative one as pursued in New Orleans.
Merchants who have traded and leased and specu-
lated under the laws of Massachusetts or New York
or Ohio, will very naturally, in the conceit of hu-
man knowledge, proceed to contract, while resident
in New Orleans, in the same manner as before ;
and thus proceeding will run upon some snag in
the under-currents of Louisiana law and be only
saved from total wreck by paying your "humble
servant of the bar" a very nice fee by way of sal-
vage. A husband and wife who in their romantic
days of courtship and in the honeymoon thought
little of property and of the legal rights which
LAW AND GOSPEL.
77
they sustained towards each other, remove to the
Crescent City and growing older find upon due
inquiry that all unconscious to themselves they are
partners in what the lawyers call a community of
acquests and gains, attended with certain very
perplexing and annoying conditions and appur:
tenances. In short, a citizen in Louisiana soon
finds that he must sue and be sued; marry and
die; share and get shaved (á la Wall-street mean-
ing;) sell and bequeath; in a very different manner
from that he has been used to in his native town
or city. Consequently, as home physicians are
always in demand by strangers troubled with the
ills that flesh is heir to, so the lawyers of New
Orleans will ever remain the walking sticks and
golden-headed canes for the citizen in every walk
of life. The merchant and the mechanic may
never so habituate himself to the legal ways of
Louisiana that he can steer his way among the
shoals and breakers of commercial currents without
consulting a lawyer's chart and compass. The
more he tries to study, the worse he will be; for
in the matter of civil law the truest application
may be made of the old couplet,
“ A little learning is a dangerous thing,
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring."
Therefore, it is not to be expected that so humble
a person as “Manhattaner" can expect to success-
fully bore the reading world with legal disquisitions
78
LAW AND GOSPEL.
upon the topic in hand; or afford it an opportunity
of quizzing rashness and ignorance conjoined.
saw when in the New Orleans court-house. It fronts
a scraggy-looking square termed the Place des
in the art. The Cathedral darkens its entrances
and obscures its windows. Lazy-looking priests
and greasy garçons rub the whitewash from its
base. Apple-women take possession of its lobbies.
Beggars besiege its vault like officers. The rains
from Heaven sport among its rafters. It has every-
where a fatty, ancient smell, which speaks dispar-
agingly of the odor in which justice is held. And
yet in this building (which the poorest Eastern
village would blow up before sundown should it
appear within its precincts) are held from Novem-
ber until July, six courts, whose officers brave
damp and steam enthusiastically and persever-
ingly. You turn out of Condé-street into a narrow
alley aud brushing past a greasy crowd, are soon
within the criminal court, where a judge, perched
in a high box, wrangles hourly with half-crazed
witnesses ;-here you behold jurymen, who of
themselves constitute a congress of nations; zeal-
ous, full-lunged lawyers; and audacious criminals
ranged in boxes, very much to the satisfaction of
a moustached district attorney and the merry-look-
ing keeper of the Parish jail. You will soon get
LAW AND GOSPEL.
79
sick with staying there, and so entering the next
room will see the happiest little judge in all
Attorney-dom (here, too, boxed up against the wall
like a Connecticut parson in a high-roofed meeting-
house,) talking with the lawyers upon the business
in hand as familiarly as though he were at his own
dinner-table, and they his honored guests.* Op-
posite, in another dreary room, are entombed the
papers of the dead; sitting by a couple of long
tables are antiquarian-looking juniors, up to their
eyes in all the mysteries of last wills and testa-
ments, inventories of property, and “succession
distributions." Climbing a weary flight of stairs,
you encounter a perplexing labyrinth of passages.
But whichever way you may go (four court rooms
and four clerkly offices about) you will see the same
boxes against the wall; the same sort of lawyers
lounging or running about: some bareheaded (full
of business, of course!) some with papers in their
hands, grateful to the sight and touch; others (of
the junior sort) eying from their airy perches, the
jostling crowd below, in hopes to find a runaway
witness, or a deceitful defendant; the same collec-
tions of books and papers, strangely hid away
behind green curtains and red doors; while every-
where a hum of voices rises in discordant chorus, es-
caping heavenward through a quadrangular court-
* This referred to the Hon. E. A. Canon, now deceased, and
who, from his name and chivalric impetuosity, was often termed
by the punsters “Little Pocket-pistol."
80
LAW AND GOSPEL.
yard, especially built therefor, by the unknown but
humane architect of the dreariest pile of brick and
mortar you have ever run away from with your
fingers in your ears.
But listen! As we are going down the ricketty
one of the rooms! It ceases; and take care of
your head and shoulders, as you turn the angle of
the upper landing; now we are retracing footsteps
-curiosity impelled ;—for the whole batch of
Advocates are turning from the room whence pro-
ceeded the Babel of tongues, and rushing like mad
into another room. Shall we follow?
But as we go, here's a round-shouldered, red-
faced, clerkly-looking personage, who is walking
the other way, as unconcerned as a stupid snail
in a beautiful garden-plot; we will button-hole
him, and inquire the cause of the tumult.
Manhattaner. Pray, inform us, what is the cause
of these legal gentlemen agitating themselves in so
undignified a manner?
they are fixing their causes.
· Manhattaner, Fixing their causes! Explain.
Redl-facect Clerk. (Putting on a scornful smile
at querist's ignorance.) All the suits which are at
issue, will be called by the clerk this morning, or,
at least, enough of them, at an average of ten a
day, to take two weeks to try; and the lawyer of
either or both the litigants, as he hears his causes
called, will have to set them for trial,
LAW AND GOSPEL.
81
Leaving the red-faced clerk to his cobwebs and
stiff paper, we enter.
The room is crowded. Lawyers of every age,
from seventy down to newly-whiskered one-and-
twenty, are here jostling around the clerk's desk, who
has just commenced with his Muggins vs. Flammer,
or Cockton vs. Trigger, etc. etc.
"Set it," cries one to a certain suit.
"Fix it,” adds another, who slightly varies the
synonyme of the first expression.
“Put it down," continues a third, improving on
the second's arrangement of syntax.
And so the dialogue is continued for fifteen
minutes, between clerk and lawyers, until the for-
mer considers he has jobbed out for the next fort-
night of jurymen and judicial leisure, a quantum
of trials: while the judge, in his little box above,
sits pairing his nails, or biting a pen, or reading
the morning paper. The old lawyers cried, "set
it," with an impertinence of equanimity impressive
to hear; the juveniles would answer, “fix it,” in
either pride of having so much of business to
answer for, or in the blushing timidity of actively
nursing to trial an infant suit-their first litigious
child.
The clerk shuts up his book; the lawyers scam-
per off; the judge turns around to "hear a motion,”
or "allow a default”; and the under scriveners of
the court having looked on for a short time to see
the fun, turn into their closet rooms.
LAW AND
AND GOSPEL.
Ha! Here comes our red-faced clerkly friend
again; he is looking particularly communicative;
and I have a further curiosity to know something
more of Louisiana practice.
Manhattaner. Is litigation attended here with
much formality ?
Red-faced Clerk. We do it up here as brown as
they do it anywhere.
Here, a blushing young advocate chimes in with
treadmill sort of business. We, advocates, (blush-
ing more and more at the word "we,'') are one-
third of our time in office; another third, in the
street, between the office and the court; and the
remaining third in these dismal rooms. We (still
accenting “we,” and pulling up from his breast
pocket, the corner of a legal document) draw up
our petition in bringing a suit, and lest, on trial,
we should have asked too little, we pray for all
sorts of legal relief. Bringing our petition down
here, the clerk copies it and adds a citation; hands
the copy and the citation to the sheriff, who serves
it on the defendant; the clerk keeps a minute of
what he does in yonder mammoth ledger and of his
fees, and the sheriff does the same. When the de-
fendant answers, his lawyer brings his answer to
the clerk, and the latter copying it, gives the
plaintiff the copy, and makes another entry and
another charge. Down come both lawyers, in a
Saturday or two thereafter, and cry "set it" and
LAW AND GOSPEL.
.6 fix it” as you heard this morning; and so get on
for trial as best they may. If we subpoena a wit-
ness it is done by writing his name and residence
in yonder book; and the clerk and sheriff hunt
him up. The “setting.” business is a complete lot-
tery. If your case is down foot of a Monday, and
not reached, it cannot interfere with Tuesday's par-
celled off causes, and over you go for two weeks
like a canoe upon the Falls of St. Anthony. :
Manhattaner.—Bravo, my worthy! As appears
from your statement, clerks and sheriffs are the
cog-wheels and levers of your machinery: you
supply the fuel; and clients are they who provide
the oil for an easy running!
• Young Advocate. Then whoever gets beaten
here, if his quarrel was about three hundred dol-
lars and over, has a record of all the proceedings
made out by the clerk, and again calls the latter
and the sheriff to help him to bring his adversary
into the opposite room for an appeal. If the
beaten party has been fool enough to quarrel
about two hundred and ninety-nine dollars or less,
he has no redress except to move for a new trial;
and then he has his trouble for his pains. But if
you are strangers, step into the appeal room; an
interesting argument is on by one of our ripest
scholars.
I crossed the vestibule and listened to him for
half an hour. He was addressing a bench of four
judges an even number, but odd enough when
84
LAW AND GOSPEL.
cach two happened to disagree. The oldest of
them would have passed in Paris for a man of
thirty-five; and the youngest was a beau-ish sort
of a gentleman, with remarkably fine whiskers,
and who, in his after-college days, had killed his
brace of banditts in Spain by way of getting up an
entertaining volume of travels.
I recognized in the speaker a tall gentleman of
commanding appearance whom I had often met
walking dignifiedly, and with smiling face, among
the busy city groups with cane in hand, which he
held rather in compliment to his slightly-furrowed
brow and flowing gray hair, than to assist foot-
steps which had lost none of their juvenile elasti-
city. His life had been made up of agreeable epi-
village; now a member of Congress beloved by all
litics : now a traveller in classic Italy, storing his
mind with the lore of the civil law, and amusing
the leisure of his severer studies with writing a life
of Torquato Tasso : now returning to his native
land, settling in New Orleans, and shedding on
the severer features of its rough-and-tumble life
the chastening influence of his refined taste and
classically stored mind. He had for a moment for-
gotten his classics and his poetry, and that "his
life was like the summer rose;" and was deep in
the mysteries of the question whether twenty-five
bales of cotton belonged to a hook-nosed snuffy
LAW AND GOSPEL.
85
gentleman seated at his side, (and dignified as "my
client” by lips which in their day had smiled upon
admiring throngs in drawing-rooms and saloons,)
or whether they belonged to a broad-backed Ken-
tuckian who was seated by the grate-fire mumbling
some chestnuts.*
* Reference is here made to RICHARD HENRY WILDE, who is
well-known to the world of letters as the author of “ My Life is like
the Summer Rose," and other melodious lyrics ; and of “The Life
and Imprisonment of Torquato Tasso." He died of yellow fever
in the summer of 1846, leaving unfinished a life of Dante, which
it is to be hoped his eldest son, who inherits his father's love of
Belles Lettres, and who was his companion in Italy, will not suf-
fer to remain in manuscript. The author, at the period of Mr.
Wilde's decease, furnished an obituary notice for the New Orleans
“ Commercial Bulletin," from which he extracts the subjoined para-
graph as expressing the concurring sentiment of the entire commu-
nity :-
“The judge upon the bench, opening his winter term, will have
one less cordial nod to bestow, as he looks around upon the Bar of
New Orleans—the youthfal advocate will have one less approving
smile upon his successful efforts--the University of Louisiana will
have one less matured and enthusiastic parent of its promising in-
fancy—the social circle and the festive board, will have one less
admired visitant and honored guest; and among the hundreds who
have fallen by the pestilence, none will be more sincerely mourned
than the distinguished scholar and amiable gentleman, whose com-
ing, a few years since, all welcomed—whose untimely removal, all
deplore.
In a city like New Orleans, where trade and commerce are the
great monopolizers of the human passions, and the plannings and
the enterprises of their votaries are the almost absorbing business
of life, a man like Mr. WILDE exercised a great humanizing influ-
ence. His learning illumined the labyrinths of commercial trans-
actions ; his scholastio graces scattered roses in the retired walks
86
LAW AND GOSPEL.
Religion, in New Orleans, is rather at a discount.
But yet public morality (saying nothing of what
takes place behind doors, and family screens, and
throughout various social circles) is more pure in
its character than in any other American city.
Whew! Manhattaner tunes the lyre to some
purpose, I think I hear exclaimed. Yet this is
not overstated.
If Boston, or Philadelphia, could show upon
their police books the small number of crimes
committed and complaints presented, which appear
in the statistics of the Crescent City municipalities,
they would be very paradises. Burglars and pick-
pockets, when paraded before His Honor of the
Criminal Court, are looked upon as for a show by
the gaping -crowds. The genus loafer is almost
of those escaping for a moment from the toils and burdens of the
day; he mingled the amenities of life with its cares, and softened
its wearied hours with the suggestions and lessons that a refined
taste so agreeably prompts-
Th’envenomed whirlwind o'er the city passed;
And, as in forests yields the monarch oak
At rudest summons 'of autumnal blast,
So did'st tbou fall before the whirlwind stroke
Oh, Poet-Jurist! leaving friends behind
Who deeply sorrow thy untimely end;
And off'ring grief-wove tributes, as they bend
Around thy tomb, unto thy master mind !
Hushed are thy lays; the music of thy tongue
Shall ring no more in learning's halls; nor seen
The stately form; the winning smile; the mien
Which charmed the thousand hearts thou dweit among.
And whilst enshrined within those hearts thou'lt be,
Each mourner-friend “ will shed a tear for thee."
LAW AND GOSPEL.
unknown in the natural history of New Orleans ;
and cigar smoking juvenile-pittites, fire-rowdies,
and brave insulters of woman, are only heard of
now and then. This in a city where manners and
customs, laws and usages are in a constant transi-
tion state ; and in whose midst more sectional pre-
judice, and national jealousy, and individual idio-
syncrasies are found than one may hunt up from
the remaining three metropolises of the United
States.
" But religion is at a discount. Not a New Eng-
land town but contains more churches; the theatres
and the opera are open of a Sunday night; bulls
are sometimes baited in the Third Municipality of
a Sunday afternoon; aeronauts ascend from shout-
ing crowds, under the eaves of a well-filled church;
cavalry in active exercise deaden the eloquence of
a popular preacher; firemen in parade jostle re-
turning congregations; infantry are at target prac-
tice on the Bayou Road; crowds of merchants
throng the post-office lobbies at noontime. But so
conspicuous is the excellence of the public moral-
ity, that these things, which appear singular and
reprehensible to a stranger, are little regarded by
the great body of churchmen in the city.
The St. Louis Cathedral is -
Now, what sort of a thing would you suppose
this cathedral to be? If the word raises in the
reader's mind thoughts of a dome and gothic towers,
and a fretted roof; or of a dim religious light and
:
88
LAW AND GOSPEL.
.
solemn grandeur, begetting memories of St. Sophia,
or St. Peter's, or (to make a striking descent) of
our own Grace Church; you will be much disap-
pointed. The St. Louis Cathedral is a little squat
edifice built of brick, covered with mortar; its
white naked sides variegated with map-like streaks
of green mould, and beautified by innumerable tin
gutters, which every rainy day tick and splutter
most musically. Place on its side a hook and eye
box, and arrange at each end' a brace of chess
rooks, of the old fashioned pattern (and made be-
fore amateurs had." seen the elephant,") and you
have a faint idea of what the St. Louis Cathedral
is in form. It fronts the Place des Armes, and
has its ugliness kept in countenance by the court-
house upon its left, and the Municipal Hall upon
its right. Its height is that of a common sized
three story house; and there hangs a cow-bell in
its tower, whose tinkling has brought on a nervous
fit for many a judge and juror in the court-rooms
hard by, and perhaps lost many a worthy party-
litigant his cause..
But for all its ungainliness, you must not utter a
syllable against the cathedral, on penalty of excom-
munication from all Creole society. Built in the ·
latter part of the last century, it possesses the reve-
rence of all the French and Spanish white cravats,
and the respect of all their children. It has be-
held the raising of the Spanish flag upon the city
flag-staff on the square before it; and seen the
LAW AND GOSPEL.
89
French tri-color and the American stars and stripes
successively replace the colors of Spain. Its aisles
have reverberated with the anthems of praise and
thanksgiving, when, beneath the holy roof, the
Hero of New Orleans and his brave associates of
the 8th of January, 1815, knelt in reverential pos-
ture, while a discomfited enemy, but a hundred
miles distant, were leaving the shores of Louisiana.
It has welcomed the nation's guest, and the friend
of Washington. Its organ has thundered forth re-
sponses to the echoing shouts of a populace hailing
the return from a hostile shore of the “Hero of
Buena Vista." Its religious rites and ceremonies
are connected with all the prominent events of the
city.
And having such endearing associations allied
to it, one regrets* that these associations could not
perch upon a better appearing edifice, which fronted
upon a better appearing square.
The latter (whose name in French, Place des
Armes, may be freely translated “the beggars' re-
treat”) possesses a very neat iron railing, one or
two respectable aged trees, a hundred or two
blades of grass, a dilapidated fountain, a very
naked flag-staff, and a venerable piece of ordnance,
classically employed every night in giving the ne-
gro population the cue for a scamper in-doors. It
* Since these sketches were written, provision has been made
by the pious pew-holders in the St. Louis Cathedral to erect a
more modern and more imposing edifice.
90
LAW AND GOSPEL.
has a water view, and with a judicious expenditure
of a few thousand dollars might be made an invit-
ing promenade; it is now but a species of cheap
lodging-house for arriving emigrants, drunken
sailors, and lazy stevedores; and occasionally the
review-ground of the most forlorn looking body of
military (their name is “Legion') I have seen out-
side a New England village upon "training day."
Thus much for reminiscences suggested by
XI.
A VISIT TO THE OPERA.
MHE Creole population of New Orleans pos-
1 sess one enjoyment well worth the envying-
an agreeable French opera! None of your mush-
room establishments which exist one day and are de-
funct the next; none of your spasmodic or mongrel
affairs with an English prima donna, and an Irish
tenor, and an Italian basso; none of your half-and-
halfs, whose orchestra is what that piquant specimen
of petticoat energy, Susan Nipper, would term a
“temporary;" accustomed to perform overtures in
race after the voice of a common singer between acts,
or "come the pathetic,” when injured maidens are
dying in pathless forests, in sky blue silks and
satin slippers; whose choruses are composed of
under bandits, sextons, smugglers, dragoons, and
comedy waiters, who can sing tolerably when the
kettle drum in the cold corner has a stout-eared
92
A VISIT TO THE OPERA.
array of attachés engaged by (and who sing, too,
without forcing green room quarrels upon the au-
dience) consecutive seasons. The French opera at
New Orleans is, indeed, worth your while; always
good management; always good singing; always
good instrumentation in the orchestra; always an
agreeable, fashionable, and critical audience.
It is a moonlight evening in November. Your
thimbleful of curaçoa upon the top of one of
Moreau's dinners (and you be a bachelor, and your
appetite be not chary of publicity) has made you
a contented and happy man for the time being.
Turning your back upon the melancholy cathe-
dral, the flower-garden behind it, and the grey-
bearded religious enthusiast, who mounts guard in
the vicinity, mumbling prayers from morning until
night; and passing from Royal into Orleans-street,
the billiard balls clicking their fascinating music
in the ear as you pass the confectioner on the cor-
ner; twenty or thirty steps bring you to a fox-co-
lored building of plain columned front, before
which stand a row of carriages, and a dozen or two
of laughing, chattering Frenchmen. A brilliant
flash of light, through opening doors, shows you
the cabarets and domino rooms opposite the Or-
leans Theatre. Entering from the street you are
in a spacious lobby; the appearance of paint and
flooring as fresh as those in Grammercy-Place Man-
A VISIT TO THE OPERA.
93
every day officiating with an amusing affectation
of dignity as crier of a court, takes your tickets,
and turns you over with your place-checks to the
various loge directors, who bow you up or down,
in and out, with a grace which, were you in Eng-
land, or at the North, would suggest the possibi-
lity of there being an unappropriated quarter dol-
lar in your miniature porte-monnaie. The parquet
is already filled with critical young Creoles, and
here and there a representative of “ Young Amer-
ica,” ambitious of connoisseur-ship in music; the
well-brushed heads about, principally belong to
scions of Creole aristocracy; family incomes, or
salaries as genteel clerks, supplying the allowance
upon simple benches, are the unwashed patrons of
Auber, Donizetti, and Halevy, who, for a dollar a
head (less by a half the payments from the remain-
der of the audience) have left their ground-floor
lodgings and red-curtained retreats, to gratify their
love of harmony. The loges above-some latticed
for privacy, most of them open-are filled with
rich dresses, fairy forms, sparkling eyes, and ani-
mated countenances. The Graces flit about from
box to box as though they were not a whit ag-
grieved by having their lodgings on the cold, cold
ground, among the Muses and Dryades of the up-
per swamp under favor of the Alderman who
named the up-town avenues after them. Every-
94
A VISIT TO THE OPERA.
where are faces which you know, reflecting å
natural and cultivated interest, not the work of
artifice, or the promptings of mere fashion. No
injudicious encores (to be more explicit, no encores
at all those absurd manifestations of delight, as
thoughtless as the man, who, at an aldermanic
feast, gormandizes turtle to the detriment of the
flavor of the turbot which follows ;) no applause
worked up at unseemly times; no snobbishness of
look, action, or language; no gross inattention.
. At the Orleans theatre, when Iricia, and Favorite,
and Guillaume Tell, and Norma, were being ren-
dered in a style, if not perfect, at least artistic, I
have lounged away many an evening with the
most satisfied home-feeling imaginable; and have
sighed to think that excellence and continuity in
English opera should be a matter so unattainable
in these United States of America.
. But to take you up again in your seat in the
stage corner of the parterre—a five-eight view of
the cosy and cheerful theatre before your eyes.
Abstracting your attention for a moment from
the stage, (excusable in the stranger,) drop your
gaze into the parquet. In the third seat from the
orchestra, by the side of a tall commanding gen-
tleman, who will deliver a division order to an
aide, or, as sheriff of the parish, bow your legal ad-
vocate to his deputy; or preside at a public din-
ner with equal grace and dignity, sits a stout, good-
humored gentleman, whose florid face bespeaks a
A VISIT TO THE OPERA..
95
life of contented ease. He has just left his judicial
box-office some three miles off, and forgetful of the
collective duties of Parish Judge (a historical of-
gages, is drinking the liquid notes of M’lle. Calve's
Salut à la France, as she triumphantly waves a tri-
colored banner. The music is striking some res-
ponsive chord in his breast. How it heaves; and how
his eye sparkles as the ran-tan-ta-plan of the little
drum sounds in the succeeding march. This florid-
faced stout gentleman, whose law library was dot-
ted with works upon military tactics; who, as judge,
was accustomed to direct the sheriff to charge on
the prisoner, and bring him into court; or to re-
quest the gentlemen of the jury, when the benches
we observed him in the opera parquet, dusted his
boots in the shell-ploughed streets of Matamoras;
wheeled his charger by the heights of Monterey ; tel-
escoped the planted batteries at Vera Cruz; flashed
his brave sword with immortal honor at Contreras,
the hero of the day; timed the entrance of the
American army into the city of Mexico; and was,
for some time, Governor of the new El Dorado on
the Pacific.*
In a loge above him sits the Colossus of the New
Orleans bar; as unmoved by the bright scene
about him, and with a countenance as severely
placid as when his vigorous logic and cool elo-
* General Persifor F. Smith.
96
A VISIT TO THE OPERA.
quence are demolishing with crushing weight the
flower-crowned confectionary pyramids of an op-
ponent's argument.* Nearly opposite him sits a
keen-eyed, bandit-looking gentleman, who, in va-
rious ways, has been the plaything of Fortune; to
whose subtle eloquence many a villain owes his
unstretched neck; and who, as you catch his re-
flected countenance in the adjoining mirror, you
involuntarily say would be much more likely to
feel at home, at some future day, amid the tumul-
tuous debates of a French Chamber of Deputies,
than in the United States Senate. Not far from
him is the Van Buren of Southern politicians (we
are in the theatre, remember, before political car-
penters have builded the Buffalo platform;) the
successful lawyer and ex-diplomatist, who, as his
adopted State grows older, will yet play a more
prominent part in her political history, unless the
restless eye and abstracted look of reflection are
poor physiognomical interpreters of steady ambi-
tion.
In the front balcony box sits a short, sunny-
faced gentleman, surrounded by a bevy of ladies,
(a planter's family, from Natchez in Mississippi, on
a metropolitan visit,) who, in the pauses between
the acts listen with almost idolatrous admiration to
the brilliancy of his conversation; while the occu-
LE
* Col. G- s.
+ The Hon. P. S.
# An Ex-Minister to Mexico.
A VISIT TO THE OPERA.
97
pants of boxes, all around, overstep for a moment
their accustomed politeness to listen to the spark-
ling sentences. It is the famous orator of the
Southwest. The whilom struggling boy; the
schoolmaster; the lawer; the politician; the pride
of the social circle; whose name is a household
word among his fellow-citizens. *
* This has reference to the lamented Seargeant S. Prentiss, who
O0
“Literary World” on the occasion of his death which he deems not
improper to subjoin in this connection:-
THE LATE SERGEANT S. PRENTISS.
To remember the virtues and chronicle the memorial deeds of
ticularly the province of the journalist; a province mournful in its
necessity, but grateful in its duty.
Our readers will have observed, in every gazette of the land, ap-
propriate reference to the life of Seargeant S. Prentiss, who died
about the first of July last, near Natchez in Mississippi, of a dis-
ease which, in the recent war, struck down at their camp-fires war-
riors of the proudest renown, while they were seemingly in the
midst of health, and which, raging in a more rapid type, deprived
the nation of the illustrious head, whose loss it is yet deploring in
the eloquence and pageantry of woe.
Mr. Prentiss, beyond his accomplishments as lawyer and poli-
tician, (which have been so well parrated by the pens of generous
friendship,) possessed peculiar claims on the country as a man of
literary attainments; and, in this connection, it is most fitting that
reference should be made to his decease in the columns of the
“ Literary World."
be no psychological quibbling on this point by any one who knew
him in the sparkling domesticity of every-day-life, or heard him in
the glowing hours of his eloquence.
98
A VISIT TO THE OPERA,
They are all among the notable characters of
New Orleans most seen at the opera, and most
eyed between acts by the Lafourche or Attakapas
planter, who, for the gratification of curiosity, ne-
A child of the Republic, without more than ordinary aids to
study and reflection, he grew to be a man of the times. Necessity
nerved his boyhood to exertion; and in the early years of his
life he waged a stern battle with Life. Like the present Presi-
dent of the country be engaged in the ranks of common school
teachers; and like him, too, his talents were observed by the
shrewd eye of experience, and they counselled to the adventurous
paths of the law. Circumstances (the open-sesame of world-
renowned greatness) exposed the treasures of his intellect-for
years of patient toil and observation among men and books had in-
creased the value of natural gifts; the diamonds of the mine vere
polished and set.
For years he has been the Cicero of the South. He continued
first in impassioned oratory at the bar; first in the wonderful pas-
sages of popular improvisation; first where the brilliant hilarity of
goodfellowship shone at the festive board. An extensive student
of letters, and gifted with an extraordinary memory, to read was
to remember, and to remember was to adorn argument, orations
and sentiment with appropriate classic allusion and graceful quo-
tation.
For a brief time he electrified the legislative halls of the nation;
and the wit, caustic humor, impassioned denunciation, and fervid
reasoning which brightened the yearly prosaics at Washington,
will long be remembered by its habitués as an era in congressional
eloquence. With ancestral home at one end of the Union, and
household gods at another extremity, he travelled to and fro
among various popular and political excitements, in the midst of
which his clarion voice was ever invoked and heard with fresh
delight.
If Mr. Prentiss was. unexcelled in the forum, at the bar, and
upon the platform of mass-meetings, he was unequalled in the
A VISIT TO THE OPERA.
99
glects the commodious wine-saloon up-stairs, from
which five minutes before the drop draws up, a
musical bell summons to their places the moderate
worshippers of Bacchus.
exuberance of his social wit, and in the facility with which he
adapted thought to occasion.
His versatility of eloquence, and profuseness of wit, vere won-
derful. To have listened to him is something to remember and
talk of as an event. The writer has heard Mr. Prentiss at politi-
cal gatherings in the meadows of the country, when everyone said,
the glorious sun-set skies, and the sublime mountains soaring to-
wards them, the gorgeous landscapes, and delicious breezes, have
inspired him; but he has heard him in the crowded and vaporish
hall, surrounded with the miasma and gas of city-life, and his
freshness of thought, grace of diction, and rapidity of combinations
have been equally happy and astonishing. He has heard him in a
court-room almost deserted, when he unexpectedly rose to speak,
although the occasion was trivial, and the question of slight mo-
ment, the room was filled as if by magic at the sound of his voice,
and the subject, which in cooler contemplation had seemed dull
and vapid, has assumed a dramatic interest. He has heard him
when “human life was in debate," and prosecuting officers closed
their books, judges forgot their notes, witnesses were suddenly en-
dowed with patience, the dullest juryman brightened with absorb-
ing attention, the prisoner seemed to forget the crisis of his posi-
tion-all spell-bound by the thrilling words of the orator lawyer.
He has heard his winning pathos and silver tones bidding a wel-
come-home to returned heroes from the bloody ground of Buena
Vista, when the wounded seemed to forget their pains, the sick
their distresses, and the sound in limb the perils of the past. He
has heard him, in the call of charity, relax the tightened purse-
strings of the most miserly. He has met him at public dinners,
when he bore away from the honored guest the laurels prepared
for his temples.
Mr. Prentiss leaves no writings that we know of. Indeed the
::.. en
100 A VISIT TO THE OPERA.
I may be prejudiced, but nowhere in this coun-
try could I satisfiedly listen to operatic perform-
ances after wearing out a brace of coats at the
Orleans theatre, and preserving in memory the
uniformity of good music there listened to, or the
attentive and animated faces there looked upon.
use of pen and ink would have only fettered his mind. And few
if any, reports of his speeches and sayings are in print; those
which have had publication seem tame to those who were present
at the first conception.
XII.
STREET-SIDE PENCILINGS—THE ST. GILES OF
NEW ORLEANS-ST. LOUIS CEMETERY.
DASSING by the Place des Armes, and the things
I which nudge it on every side, such as fruit
stalls, and rickety cabs driven by picturesque dri-
vers, who form a cosmopolitan gallery of portraits
as they slumber listlessly on their sun-baked leather
seats; and the temporary print galleries around the
iron railing of the park—print galleries that all day
long exhibit, with commendable gratuity, sailors
in large trowsers, on large sheets of paper, bidding
tender adieus to sweethearts in pink gowns, with
balloon sleeves, to say nothing of the various mili-
tary heroes who are giving, or receiving, or using
of heavy white smoke, whose puffy, rolling volume
leads you to query whether or not there be near
by the camping-ground a Dutch ale-house. Pass-
102
STREET-SIDE PENCILINGS.
ing all these, I say, and entering Condé-street, (your
back to the more modern parts of the city,) you
approach the St. Giles of New Orleans. All cities
have their St. Giles' precincts, where poverty and
vice run races with want and passion, on the differ-
ent human race-courses, and form pictures for the
eloquence of political orators to descant upon, or
legislative Solons to construct statistical tables
from, when that eternal subject, the amelioration
of the lower orders, is broached.
of mixture, and variety of characteristic, will chal-
lenge interest with any other city.
Picayune dram-houses (better known among
Crescent citizens as cabarets) smoke each other
(tobaccowise) at every few steps, whatever way you
turn. High brick buildings, filled from ground
floors to attics with "apartment lodgers," line the
narrow streets about on every side, towards the
river, or in the lane-like streets which bear the Mis-
sissippi company upon his downward course.
Scolding wives, with dishevelled hair and dirty
babies, (infant specimens of at least six nations)
compliment themselves, and their acquaintances
who may be within ear-shot distance, in language
more vigorous and more curious from variety of
dialect than choice. Frenchmen are near by, ges-
ticulating; Dutchmen jabbering and making your
jaws ache in sympathy within their very sockets;
Italians chattering up and down; some, of all these,
STREET-SIDE PENCILINGS.
103
:
in blouses; some in nautical rig; others with
scarcely a truthful claim to habiliment of any sort.
Old clo' shops, of a mouldy smell; junk shops,
where the prevailing smell is of chains and ring-
bolts, (if you have ever been sea-sick, and will pass
them by, you cannot fail to recognize the aptitude
of an illustration else reprehensible,) and shoe shops,
are side by side in amicable intercourse. Tea-ket-
iles and bananas; bunches of keys, and red or yel-
low kerchiefs; soap and straw hats; candles of
prodigious length, at times, and prunella gaiters
polite;) marvellously cheap shirts, rainbow hued,
as they lie together; knives and flageolets; and,
not to prolong a catalogue of incongruous articles
of exchange and sale, articles of all possible utility,
are roasting together, store by store, in the sun, or
be the atmosphere of the day about them. Here,
too, a cobbler has possession of the trottoir, and is
hammering away to the march in " La Fille du
Regiment," which he heard last Sunday evening at
the Orleans theatre. There, à tinman's itinerant
furnace and forge are making the curb-stone swell
with indignant heat. Not far off a brace of "rag
hookers” are disputing the middle of the street with
a couple of quarrelling negro garçons. Heads
decorated with red, yellow, and flaring cotton 'ker-
chiefs, brown, black, or sallow faces underneath, are
seen at every window. There are artisan signs in
104
THE ST. GILES OF NEW ORLEANS.
French, in numbers enough to give any four blocks
in throbbing Broadway the most business-like ap-
pearance desirable. Far and near, idleness and in-
dustry, dissipation and petty commerce, at their ap-
propriate places of abode, are “holding their own."
And as in the midst of all this you stop in the nar-
row streets and look at the narrow-bricked houses,
and have your ears full of strange sounds, you
wonder whether you have not bestridden the fly-
ing horse, and gone abroad to places Continental:
the thought is but for a moment, for you have
asked yourself the question fifty times before, on
other occasions.
This so termed Crescent City St. Giles is em-
braced by half a dozen blocks, which also assist
the ship-besieged levee in environing the lower
markets; and a water-raising engine, which sobs
and wheezes by the side of a Bunker Hill Monu-
ment of a chimney, as it pumps up water from the
river to fill the underground pipes of the First Mu-
nicipality, You soon get a headache walking
around them, and taking a river street, move down.
ward, Still, dram-shops and junk-shops as you go;
more flaring goods and shining shoes; oyster-stands
now and then, for variety; drays are thundering
by; and yet, and yet, as square on square is passed,
the million wheels of commerce are turning in a
ceaseless round; a cheering round, too, as one
thinks of the sum total of bank accounts that every-
thing is momently swelling. You are soon by the
STREET-SIDE PENCILINGS.
105
side of a compact brown building, fronting on a
wide street, (greedy of ground it is, and has a square
to itself,) with green grass and shrubbery about it,
which look strangely, but gratefully, amid all the
dust and smoke about. It comes quite apropos to
your last train of thought upon bank accounts, for
it is the Branch Mint building; within whose rigid
walls are being put into unquestioned shapes the
gold and silver, whose power is reflected outside.
Postponing a visit of examination until a leisure.
day, and a brief permit from the polite Superin-
tendent is given for the purpose, you walk around
it and turn into Esplanade-street, where your head-
ache grows better, for the noise is not so stunning,
with trifling regard, as the thoughts run upon the
rattling and rumbling ten squares back. The street
is wide, and the sun hot—the scraggy trees upon
the grass-plot, that like, as in Canal-street, divide
the street into two causeways, only aggravate your
appreciation of the fiery atmosphere; and, after a
short walk swampward, you turn up a narrow and
shadier street. What odd-appearing tenements are
met with! Local habitations, surely, possessing
some distinctive name! Wide and low; the eaves
problem for the skill of a student in geometry.
“Whence the misery that lodges here?” is an in-
voluntary ejaculation. Misery! that is very good;
glance in at the windows of these houses, as you
6*
106 THE ST. GILES OF NEW ORLEANS.
pass, and you find rich furniture, and tokens of
luxurious comfort, which give an earnest lie to the
outside look. These odd-looking tenements are the
and high storied life as a savage dreads a fork for
dinner purposes. From the outside, moreover,
they have a somnolent look, and after a while you
cease to wonder why Creole napping is so frequent
and powerful.
Once more swampward! and Circus-street is
reached. More width; more scraggy trees; more
hot and dreamy quietude. Here is a parı, too,
with primitive posts, and consumptive grass. The
stranger asks is it hallowed ground? so solemnly
still is everything about, from the better class
houses bounding it, to the absurd brick and mortar
building across it, known as the Calaboose, or pris-
on; and even including the frightful watch-box at
the corner, where a smoke-dried Frenchman tinkles
a bell, whenever word is brought to him that a fire
is burning within the precincts of his watch duty.
It is no hallowed ground; and you will believe
this well, if you will come on a Sunday afternoon
and witness crowds of happy seryants shaking the
swampy soil with dancing and jumping, or fright-
ening, with the noise of clattering bones, and barrel-
headed drumming, the aforesaid bell-ringer from
his rickety retreat. So, too, if you will come when
a huge tent covers the corner of it, and the noise
107
of four trombones, and one drum of astounding
power of endurance, that blow and thump all the
beauty out of the Star-spangled Banner (really ex-
ecuting it, as promised in the small and dirty typed
bills,) suggests to you that a circus is in full exhi-
bition, whereat occur grand Bedouin entrées of
thirty horses, with candle-fąced riders; not to for-
get the astonishing feats of the brigand, who is
understood to illustrate robber-life in Italy, by
raising himself up and down upon a superannuated
horse, and now and then exploding a pocket-pistol.
Gazing about as you lounge in this park, you
see the tops of some half dozen masts near by.
The Mississippi has as many curious turns as any
nervous woman, you have already discovered
that; and can it be that after having left it as you
it? This little lane-turn will explain matters; and
it opens to view a fifty feet basin, the termination
of a canal, which extends lazily into Lake Pon-
chartrain through a sleepy stretch of cypress-cover-
ed swamp. But the canal is under Creole govern-
ment, and little of bustle is seen about. A few
bales of cotton, a pile or so of lumber, some cut
fire wood, are lying around. A dray stands by
with its boy looking yainly about for some know.
ing one to inquire of. Vainly, for the skippers and
their crew are quarrelling in a cabaret near by,
over a game of stained dominoes and some vin or.
dinaire,
108 THE ST. GILES OF NEW ORLEANS.
If the commercial prosperity of New Orleans
had always depended upon Creole enterprise, I fear
me the purchase of Louisiana would not have been
so highly lauded as now.
Again pedestrianating upwards through the rear
Faubourg of the First Municipality, where the
houses are universally low in height, and with
projecting eaves, (small array of furniture al-
though,) and walking upon long thick bits of
plank, once the gunwales of flatboats, (and the
universal sidewalks of New Orleans suburbs, where
the little-trodden marshy soil sponges up bricks
and stones as though they were grains of sand,) in
a few squares' stretch, you will reach the St. Louis
Cemetery-Roman Catholic soil. A street inter-
sects it, and brick-walls with ominous-appearing
gates hem it in; making a species of fortification,
as if the living were in danger of storming a cita-
del where Death was an inmate !
Various poets have called cemeteries Cities of
the Dead ; and the expression is forcible applied to
those of New Orleans, of which the St. Louis is a
representative specimen. Cities of the dead; be-
cause from the peculiar moisture of the soil inter-
ments are in tombs and oven-like vaults, construct-
ed above ground; the latter in tiers of three and
four along the cemetery walls, built of brick and
faced with marble, upon which to inscribe the
words with which affection consecrates entombed
dust. In the area are private tombs constructed
STREET-SIDE PENCILINGS.
109
with granite or marble, and varied in form and
finish by taste and worldly circumstance. To
some, this idea of burial above ground, where each
body has, as it were, a mansion to itself, and which
in most cases is just large enough to hold the
coffin, is revolting. I have heard many a sojourner
say, “Oh, if I die, send me for burial to my north-
ern home,—don't shut me up in those horrid cells."
But to others, the idea that they stood by the side
of one loved well, and conscious that but a foot of
brick and mortar separated a friend's mortality
(which fancy still kept as in life) from their own,
was gratifying. Many of the private tombs of the
St. Louis Cemetery are very costly, but for the
most part more curious in design and execution
than artistic. Some with recesses where private
masses for the dead may be celebrated; with
statues and figures of the saints; and decorated
altars. Many are old and crumbling, and dyed
green with moisture.
When the first day of November comes in, and
the religious index points to it on the calendar as
" All Saints' Day," the St. Louis Cemetery is
thronged with pious devotees of all ages and sexes
-principally females—coming to offer up prayers
at the burial altars of departed relatives, bringing
tapers, and incense, and flowers, to put before
them. It is not a little startling to jostle among
the crowds (for I have seen at least three thousand
people in attendance when the day was sunny,)
110
THE ST. GILES OF NEW ORLEANS.
walking through avenues of tombs where the dead
were laid in rows above each other. To many a
tender frame has issued upon such occasions from
the damp alleys and causeways, a death warrant
which was sealed, delivered, and executed before
the expiration of another month. Of the crowd
the largest number were mere idle spectators-
many, the butterflies of New Orleans, who gaped,
wondered, chatted, and talked, as though it were a
gala day, and they invited or privileged guests at
some great fête. But the humble kneelers heeded
them not, and absorbed in their private griefs,
thought little of the flippant laugh or stare of
curiosity around them. As after such a day I
have turned down Toulouse-street, leaving a hum
of voices behind me in this " city of the dead,” I
have thought here is but another witness to the
force of the old aphorism, "all men think all men
mortal but themselves.”
XIII.
WATERING PLACES.
W ATER privileges are decidedly abundant in
y New Orleans. Water over the city a sixth
part of the year, under the city, and in front of it,
and in its rear all the year. How so little of earth
can absorb so much fluid will long remain a prob-
lem to muddle the ideas of southern engineers.
Lake Ponchartrain, at the rear, is famous as the
place over and through which are conveyed sum-
mer after summer, crowds of resident pleasure-
seekers in search (can one believe it?) of a water-
ing place !
The long line of coast upon this lake and upon
its snug neighbor, Lake Borgne-stretching from
Louisiana to Florida-is thickly dotted with water-
ing places, whither rush those unfortunate families
who belong to the "can't get away club” of the
Crescent City; a club so designated in contradis-
112
WATERING PLACES.
tinction to the crowds who at the close of every
winter and spring business make pilgrimages in
search of recreative pleasures to the northerly sec-
tions of the Union.
Shall we visit some of them ?
Hail one of the smart-looking carriages on the
corner of Canal and St. Charles-streets, (of course
you have a carpet-bag,) and order a drive to the
Ponchartrain Railroad depôt. It is far downward,
and hidden away in a labyrinth of dingy houses
when reached as you would desire on a windy day.
It is at the head of the Champs Elysees—an ave-
nue like its original only in name, but which,
when the present race of Creoles dies off, may be
made one of the healthiest lungs of the Crescent
City. The depôt is a long building, whose founda-
tion as laid by sanguine men of enlarged ideas, is
consecrated to emptiness, and dreary enough in
New England "meeting-house." Out of it run
two parallel lines, constructed of strips of iron,
which rest upon the surface of the ground for four
miles, and then cease—these strips of iron are dig-
nified by the name of "Ponchartrain Railroad.”
It is so hidden away by sand and grass, and so
swallowed up in a swamp thicket, that it has thus
far escaped the vigilant observation of Doggett,
(Manhattan's favorite Directory son,) who now and
WATERING PLACES.
113
then, with a humane consideration for travelling
comfort, issues a Railroad Gazette.
The Ponchartrain Railroad should have a promi-
nent place in the statistical tables of the next
census. It is a primitive remnant of railway navi-
gation. It is a relic from the infantile days of the
art of steam propulsion, and would be a capital
thing to transplant and extend in one of the
thousand acre parks of England's fallen railway
king, where it would be at once a curiosity and a
warning. Aye, transplanted ! even with its minia-
ture locomotive, (of one thousand mosquito power,)
harder-seated cars.
*
clare dividends out of the capital, and therefore
are savagely attacked. That were little when one
is told that the directors of this four mile railroad
declared an immense dividend—borrowing the
money for the purpose! But some of these days
the Gauls who watch over its drowsy finances will
have a little Saxon “ direction” blood infused into
their veins of management, and the railroad will
thereafter cease to be the object of tavelling
malice.
Over this road you are "ricketed” to the Lake;
and if you have ever ridden Turkish fashion over
the granite soil of New Hampshire in a farm
wagon, you can understand, and only in this event,
the meaning of the word "ricketed."
114
WATERING PLACES.
At the end of a long pier running out from a
collection of fishing cottages is moored a fine
steamer, bound Mobileward. Stepping on board
you are soon upon the waters of Lake Ponchar-
train, into which, in ages since, emptied the Mis-
sissippi, that now rolls sullenly a strip-of-land's
breadth off, to give a site to New Orleans.
Squeezing between two forts which guard the
rear entrance to the city, (they are separated by a
bit of water that New England ideas would call a
creek,) Lake Borgne is entered. The “Bay of St.
Louis” is the first landing-place; a cozy looking
country spot, but owes too much to French domi-
nation and French society, and so you pass it by
to step ashore at "Pass Christian," the distance of
a cannon shot beyond.
Step ashore here, I say, because a gentlemanly
host, a well appointed ménage, and an unquar-
relled-with-cuisine are great offsets to the monot-
onous landscape, the teasing mosquitoes, and the
ankle-deep sand soil which are to be met with
everywhere in the immediate vicinity of New Or-
leans. The landing is made at a long pier, over
which you walk to“ Montgomery's Hotel,” follow-
ing a donkey-cart well laden with luggage; plant-
ing your feet firmly on the slippery planks, if the
wind be fresh, and clambering a steep hill of sand,
(by the aid of the glimmering from the light-house
tower hard by,) to find at the summit your flagging
WATERING PLACES.
115
spirits cheered by the sight of a pleasant smelling
garden.
It is not without feelings of apprehension that
nervous youths and fidgety old bachelors behold
this aforesaid pier of a Saturday night, as the boat
they are passengers of approaches the "Pass.”
Such a collection of white and colored bonnets !
Such a waving of delicately-perfumed cambric!
Such a bewildering and intoxicating murmur of
gentle voices! The men about are in a hopeless
minority. The veteran fisherman who all day
long sunned himself on the bulkhead, angling, has
slipped away long since with timorous steps. The
boatmen about but half emerge from places of con-
cealment. It looks very much like a vigorous de-
fence to an invading enemy until the steamers's
lines are thrown, and then what a scattering!
Poor exiles that these fair ones have been! Hus-
bands, brothers, and lovers for the past week have
been in the tiresome, heated city, and Saturday
night at Pass Christian (as in the sailor's legend
hearts and wives.
The hotel buildings are drawn up for your ap-
proach in true military style-forming a hollow
square, with a reserve of apartments attached that
stretch out in solid lines and look out with for-
midable aspect over the waters of Lake Borgne
impertinently obstructs a gulf view for levelled
telescopes, and keeps off any matter of surf that
116
WATERING PLACES.
seaward gales might beget. The buildings are
formed of a numerous collection of doors, windows,
and piazzas, more commodious than comfortable;
and cooler in interior than is desirable, when the
«melancholy days of rain and gale,
“_
as still such days will come.”
succeeded by an Æolian freak-a day of blistering
sunlight.
At "Montgomery's," from early June until late
October, there is eating and drinking; bowling and
flirting; billiards and snoozing; gossip and toilette;
driving and novel reading; sailing and yawning;
bathing and mosquito scratching; dancing and mu-
sic. And then the winter long, (a very dreary sea-
son on the lake shore, as the rheumatic postmistress
confidentially informed me, although a nautical
friend who had builded a house on the water-side
out of a worn out steamboat, declared his residence
was pleasanter in winter than summer,) the wind,
mourning the absence of beauty and fashion, will
doors and windows, and hum along the quarter-
mile piazzas, before it passes on to quarrel with
distant rigging, or with the adjacent live-oaks and
cypresses, which fill the Mississippian swamp, that
from the hotel-back stretches out into a deeper
and deeper wilderness of mud and thicket growth.
Further on is Pascagoula and Pensacola-the
latter the quietest of all the watering places on the
WATERING PLACES.
117
southern shore; and the former much resorted to
their sumptuous equipages, dozens of servants, and
heart-breaking daughter heiresses. Pascagoula has
been called the Newport of the South. In ton it
may be; but ton has little weight with men, after
tasting Montgomery's pompano, lake trout, and
redfish chowder; and so, I somehow never jour-
neyed past the Pass Christian landing. Besides,
ideas of fashion and exclusiveness vary. As far
as I could see, Montgomery's exactions of body-
coat, and dinner-dresses, were quite rigid enough;
and the intelligent faces, and well stuffed portes
·monnaies about, had sufficient of the aristocratic
stamp for a quiet man.
I was one night crowded from my accustomed
room into one of the reserve rear buildings, (called
by some waggish fair one “Texas," because they were
refuge places for suspicious nobodies, who quitted
the cities to escape yellow fever, and for play-loving
bachelors, whose midnight card-playing was annoy-
. ing to delicate nerves, and for disconsolate hus-
bands, whose wives had female friends to turn them
out,) and I wanted, for a chum, either Buckstone, the
matic prototype. The partition walls of my cham-
ber were thin; in fact the whole building was a
whispering gallery.
· Two city clerks, who had left cotton and sugar
for a short period of rustication, were my neigh-
118
WATERING PLACES.
bors. They were full of personal history, frank
and communicative; and although I dropped boot-
jacks, rattled chairs, and scraped my throat with
coughing, not a whit did they seem to heed the
danger of being overheard. One had mingled the
most in society, whereby he had picked up a tol-
erable smattering of etiquette about enough to
make him nervous and awkward. His great hor-
ror was lest his companion—to use his phrase
should " betray their plebian origin."
"Remember, my boy, we are amidst fashion-
·
a course”_
"Confound it, Tom, I didn't want that horrid
kidney, which”—
“Never mind; there was plenty else but listen
-you pared your nails on the piazza, and near by
stood Miss the heiress."
"Good heavens, Tom!" :
"Oh horrible! but I have a plan for the future.
Lest any more of these things should "betray our
plebian origin," whenever I see you at table offend-
ing, I'll tread upon your foot.”
“Agreed—with one condition-tread on the left
foot, for upon my right is a corn as large as an
The next morning, at breakfast, I sat near them.
Their toilette was unexceptionable; but the ner-
vous look of the one presented a ludicrous contrast
to the look of effrontery cast up and down the ta-
WATERING PLACES.
119
ble by the other. The betrayer of plebian origin
was about eating an egg, and committing the hei-
nous crime of emptying the shell into a glass, pre-
paratory to the churning process with butter, pep-
per, and salt!
The proceeding caught the eye of the watchful
guardian of etiquette, and down came his foot. I
saw it was on the "corn,” by the half-stifled groan
from the injured man, and by the convulsive shut-
ting of the hand, which broke the egg-shell, and
trickled the yolk into his sleeve.
The pain was superior to prudence and self-pos-
session, and the betrayer of plebian origin roared
out, “Tom, it's the wrong foot! confound our ple-
bian origin and your thick boots!"
The astonishment depicted upon the various
faces about, was truly ludicrous. Our heroes beat
a speedy retreat, and at dinner time were marked
upon the register as departed guests.
The Manhattaner who passes a summer at New
Orleans, cannot soon forget "Montgomery's," at
the Pass Christian Watering Place. And of an
August night, with perspiration wreathing my tem-
ples, in the breeze deserted city, I sip my claret
to its prosperity, and almost wish myself seated at
the piazza-end, listening to the ripple of the waters,
a stone's throw off, and drinking in, with grateful
lungs, the Caribbean-born breeze, which so noise-
· lessly, but effectively, stirs the atmosphere about.
i listening drinking which seat
XIV.
RIDE TO A SUGAR PLANTATION-PLANTATION
FESTIVITIES.
nNE odd-feeling, sultry morning, in early Decem-
ber, (never mind lifting your eyebrows, my
shivering critic; there are sultry mornings in a
New Orleans December,) being dyspeptic, after a
supper a la Moreau, the prince of restaurateurs, I
was disposed for some exercise, and so cantered
my horse down the river, for a polite breakfast call
at the sugar plantation of a friend. The road lay
by the side of the levee—an embankment of eight
or ten feet, fragilely guarding watery encroach-
of negro cabins (whose clustering appearance would
not disgrace New England soil) some hundred feet
back. Much of the cane was still standing, sug-
gestive, to a northern eye, of doubly-close planted
fields of corn; and in and around the rows bobbed
.
RIDE TO A SUGAR PLANTATION.
121
O
J
.
woolly heads, as if timing some invisible music.
The river rolled majestically by, with here and
there on its current the common Mississippi-sight
of a steam tug hugging along some ships, as an am-
bitious youngster, in display of his strength, might
carry about a couple of teen-ish sisters. I turned
into the avenue, after beckoning a garçon to the
gate, just as my friend with a broad-brimmed straw
bat, (for the sun was winking as if he intended to
be very fiery in intercourse with his darling col-
lateral relation, the earth,) was mounting his little
pony.
"Whither bound, mon ami?”
"Ah, is it you? And so early? To the sugar-
we'll back to breakfast in half an hour."
Ten minutes' riding brought us to the sugar-house;
a brick and mortar edifice, suggestive of a New
England factory, with its tall, smoky chimney, and
mill-rolling buzzing.
The encyclopædia at your elbow will spare me
the trouble, reader, and you the weariness of going
through the details of sugar-making; of describing
the long rack, with flexible vertebræ, (inquisition-
reminding machine,) upon which were stretched,
in even layers, the leaf-denuded stalks of cane, to
off, bruised and bleeding; of describing the gutters
and pipes, through which the expressed juice of
the cane ran into kettles, and boilers, and vats,
122
RIDE TO A SUGAR PLÁNTATION.
where it was boiled, simmered, stirred, and paddled
about by fat negroes, whose shining and sound teeth
gave the lie direct to your dentist's idea that sugarin-
jures the enamel, or eats into the cores of your va-
rious respectable masticators; or of alluding to the
hogsheads, which, filled with wet sugar, stood upon
wooden bars, through whose interstices, into vats
below, dripped molasses, that in months to come
would gladden many a Yankee throat on buck-
wheat-pancake-day.
"We finish our sugar grinding next week;" quoth
my friend, and then we have a bit of merry-
making—a 'king's' ball, at which you must make
one of the guests; and a queenly affair it will be."
“A king's ball?"
“Ah, you have not heard. Certain of the young-
asters among us, at every yearly winter's ball of the
neighborhood, are presented with bouquets by the
ladies, who have been the chosen. queens of the
festivities then concluding; and each bouquet pre-
sentee is crowned the king of the next year's ball;
being one of the fortunate individuals whose time,
purse, and gallantry; are thus placed at the disposal
of beauty and fashion. Each king accordingly se-
lects a queen, and under their united auspices the
ball is given. So at our forthcoming one you must
join our festivities.”
And I did.
The parlors of Monsieur De L
's plantation
PLANTATION FESTIVÍTIES.
123
:
mansion were comfortably filled with the Creole
beauty and fashion of the parishes of St. Bernard
and Plaquemine; planter's families; with a small
addition of city friends.
[Mem. Although the general society of New
Orleans is still in a chaotic state, and she has no
no “upper ten" as yet entered in the relentless
ledgers of fashion; and although generally he who
riddles among the Creoles of country and city
"exclusiveness” is a known word, and its meaning
properly recognisable by the ten year interlopers of
the Second Municipality.]
The complexion of the rooms was decidedly
French, and yet with a dash of American feature
and manner just sufficient to suggest a contrast.
Creole beauty is not usually of that caste
with which to cultivate love at first sight. One
must push his acquaintance with it in order to get
into raptures and bubble over his fountains of en-
thusiasm. You see the full black eye; the raven
lustre and classic weight of hair; and the well-
chiselled nose and gracefully met lips. But in
their hours of repose their beauty is not striking.
In its hour of exhilaration and excitement, how-
ever, the Creole beauty of Louisiana will satisfy
the most fastidious critic in the æsthetics of physi-
ognomy. in
Before me at the ball it was in its triumphant
124
RIDE TO A SUGAR PLANTATION.
mood. Then so exquisitely set-off by the thousand
minute charms of dress and motion which your
true French woman, or French descended woman,
can so well adapt to herself.
• There were many present of the ancien regime of
Louisiana. Exclusive; but not cold nor haughty.
Proud they are; yet affable. Exacting of etiquette
to a hair line; yet hospitable; and none more so.
I was soon (although among strangers) as much at
home in feeling as if my memory had learned and
moulded their growing features day after day, from
early childhood.
The ringing laugh'; the merry music; and the
shadows of the dancers and masquers at that "coast
ball," will be among my most pleasurable remini-
scences of the South.
As I stood by an open window refreshing my-
self after a quadrille, with the puffs of river air
coming gratefully inward, and there looking ad-
miringly and musingly upon the gay scene before
me, my friend touched my shoulder and called my
attention to the glorious couple who were whirling
in one of Julien's waltzes, while the eyes of the
idlers became intently fixed upon them.
"Are they not worthy of the admiration their
appearance elicits ?”
I nodded assent.
“Man and wife-in the prime of life, with forty
years figured down for them in the old bible at
their Knickerbocker early home; yet as buoyant
PLANTATION FESTIVITIES.
125
in feeling and tender in intercourse as though they
were lovers."
"Lovers! there's a story in your eyem I see it.
Take a seat in this recess, and narrate without any
allusions to 'long ago' or 'once upon a time,' if
you please.”
“They were lovers, and thereby hangs the tale.
She was an idolized belle, when he was a bashful
sophomore at college with his books. She was a
finished woman while he was yet an awkward boy.
They met at his mother's house; and as he gazed
into her liquid eyes, and listened to her joyous
voice, hopes and thoughts, new and exhilarating,
were born in his soul. Their opportunities of so-
ciety became frequent. While he made her his
idol, and loved as youth only loves, without rea-
son or analysis, she looked upon him as a younger
brother-laughed at his jokes—teased his whilom
nervousness—praised his rhymes, (of which she was
the inspiring muse,) and accepted his escort to
soirée and concert when beaux more promising but
less faithful failed in their punctual homage. Years
refusals were frequent. He grew more manly;
loving as blindly, as devotedly as ever; and as se-
cretly—for as yet no thought of his idolatry cross-
ed her mind, or was impelled into utterance by his
speech or action. The slight difference of age, his
instinct taught him, was fatal to his hopes. Avowal
might bring rebuke, and rebuke banishment. He
126
RIDE TO A SUGAR PLANTATION.
reflected as the months rolled on, and reflection
summoned to his relief prudence. He accepted
voluntary. banishment, and left New York-for
that was their residence-for New Orleans, which
was in the infancy of its prosperity, and the ul-
tima Thule of domestic emigration :
“The parting was agonizing to him ; for
a thousand hopes died in that“ hour ; and
the calmness of his adieu was frightful to her vis-
ion. For the first time she suspected his love.
He reached New Orleans; and in the study of
Louisiana law, intricate in practice and abstruse in
detail, forgot for a time the power and majesty of
his love. Ambition succeeded beauty as his idol.
Hours there were when the memory of his early
love, returned in power as of old; but in study
and mental toil and ambitious aspiration, that
power was lessened of its sting.
!? She made a marriage de convenance with a
money-broker to.oblige her father; and in the fri-
gidity of her husband's soul was as unhappy as one
of her generous impulses and affectionate disposi-
tions always must be when meeting with no return
of sympathy. Her husband failed. So did her -
father. Both died; and she and her family were
destitute. . .
"Her early lover had remained single, had
amassed wealth, and was earning the proud dis-
tinction of a name. News of her position reached
him, and in the midst of winter, with the pressure
.
PLANTATION FESTIVITIES.
127
of a large business on his shoulders, he left New
Orleans, and journeyed to New York. They met.
Time had but set the seal of all glorious matured
loveliness upon her brow.*
"And in the usual style of the Ladies' books—
I've read such tales a hundred times—they were
married and he relieved everybody from diffi-
culty."
“You guess at the exact sequel. But my story
has one merit, and it is as true as the compass
points in the quadrangle through yonder window.
They were married. She returned with him to the
sunny south, and the years of both of them fresh-
ened by the memories of youth, and the realization
on his part of hopes long thought dead, and on her
part of a happiness doubly grateful by its contrast
with the past. It is ten years since this. And
they are as trusting and confiding as ever. Inse-
parable even in society, and bold against the eti-
quette of Creole customs, as you saw by their
whirling together in yonder waltz. He was king
of the ball, and chose her as queen. Both things
innovations. But their story is known and ap-
preciated; and they are courted everywhere, and
all they do admired."
* “ The last
The ripest seal of loveliness was set
Upon her form." —
LORD IVON BY WILLIS.
LEVEES AND CREVASSES. THE FATHER OF WA-
TERS IN CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE PENOB-
SCOT RIVER.
66 MÄKING in contemplation New Orleans as a
I whole, what dy'e think of it?" asked an
“old settler” of an acquaintance-stranger, in my
hearing
“As a hole ? you're depreciative and ”
"No—no—none of your waggeries ; I mean
balancing the advantages and the disadvantages of
locality, climate, et cetera."
“Well then to be candid,” continued he who
was buttonholed, and whose uncle had been in
correspondence with Preissnetz“ I think it is a par-
adise for a water-cure hospital !"
I am certain there are few nervous ladies and
gentlemen, who, if they could be induced to make
VEES AND
CVASSES.
LEVEES AND CREVASSES. 129
a short ascent in a balloon from any portion of
situation would consent to inhabit its precincts
without the preparation of a life-boat in their gar-
rets, or at least the latest improvement of a life-
preserver in their pockets. They would see the
‘if toppled over some day, might call forth from
any epistolary " Toots” to a correspondent at the
north the expression of the great original to 'Lieu-
tenant Walters when the latter narrated his escape
from shipwreck—"I'm afraid you must have got
very wet.” However, the Orleanois treat the idea
of incursion from “old Mississippi” as a humorous
absurdity. Their scepticism of security has been
sorely tried, however, in two or three recent in-
stances of crevasses which have induced the con-
struction of a transverse levee from river to lake
(very much to the horror of the back-settlers who
have their own private opinion of the selfishness
predominant in large cities.) The “Father of
Waters” as it sweeps its mischievous eddies around
the circling banks eyes the crops to the right and
left with a very spiteful glance. I have seen a
million dollars worth of property—plantations;
field lands; sugar-houses, and their ponderous ma-
chinery; family mansions, and live. stock, at the
mercy of a narrow mound of clay and sod that a
vigorous ditch-digger on a New England farm
often equals in strength by the accumulation of
7*
130
LEVEES AND CREVASSES.
random spadings of soil. It has so often been in
the power of an indolent and reckless planter
(owner, perhaps, of a few hundred acres, and who
sends some twenty hogsheads of sugar to his factor
with instructions to "hold on” for a stubborn price
in hopes of a “lull” in the market) to suffer a de-
vastation of his neighbor's property to enrich his
own with a deposit of soil from the vagrant river,
that the miracle is not that one hears of so few
perpetual ones. I know I will be referred to
statute-books, (Verbo: "Levees,”) and expected to
read pages of directions and penalties; or told of
the gangs of field hands and Levee Inspectors re-
quired to be at work in certain seasons on weak
points; but, nevertheless, Mississippi is a sly ras-
cal, and will often; with the aid of a small craw-
fish, which a starving Irishman would barely deign
to eat, undermine in a few nights the month's
labors of a dozen gangs of “Mound Builders.”
."Enrich his own land with a deposit of soil !"
repeats some reader dashing the sentence with a
“quere.” That the Mississippi water is heavy with
mud any juvenile geographer knows; but the
quantity of “settlings” left behind in one season on
submerged land will be scarcely credited save by
eye-witnesses. I was shown some six hundred
that some ten or twelve years ago was "manufac-
tured" on worthless swamp land by a season's irri-
gation. The law of accretion which in the Code
FATHER OF WATERS AND PENOBSCOT. 131
Napoleon is rather a fancy subject, becomes emi-
nently practical to the thumbers of the civil code
of Louisiana. There are now pending suits' under
the law which, in their discussion, have shaken to
the verge of concussion the brains of dead and
worm-eaten New Orleans lawyers, and which, to all
appearance, bid fair to afford years of handsome
* livings to civilians yet unborn,
The Crevasse ! ominous words these two, to
dwellers in the lower Mississippi; as ominous as
puzzling to the northern uninitiated. Out with
your Webster, Walker or Richardson, (according
to the dictionary you swear by,) and pencil for the
word this definition; "Crevasse. A word ex-
pressing a break made by the force of a river-cur-
rent in a levee or dyke. N. B. The word is very
common in New Orleans papers, and in the dry
season a great bugbear to northern editors.
There have been very serious ones occurring on
the Mississippi River, since I had the pleasure of
airing my carpet-bag in New Orleans; but I had
opportunity of settling my breakfast with the sight
of a small one, by the aid of Philanthropist Mc-
Donough's* ferry-boat. The river had been insulted,
no doubt, by the number of launches that the busy
town of Algiers (opposite New Orleans) yearly in-
flicted upon him, and so one fine morning, before
sluggish mortals were wide awake, he made a sud-
den sweep upon the various ship-yards of its vi-
132
LEVEES AND CREVASSES.
cinity, and sported famously upon a race-course
hard by. Crevasse ! Crevasse ! was echoed by by-
standers early on 'change; and re-echoed by many,
as they would cry out, Mad bull! to an elderly
lady wearing a red shawl, in the vicinity of a china-
ware shop. I took a preliminary observation from
the dome of the St. Charles, (where one will always
be safe from watery accidents, unless they come
cloud-wise,) and satisfied myself that the town of
Algiers, unless something was done for it in the en-
gineering way, would become a species of Hercu-
laneum for diving-bell amateurs of the day; al-
though the waggish book-keeper of the establish-
ment insisted that the “Father of Waters" was
complimenting Algiers by giving it a bay. In
other words, it was all day with it. When I crossed
over in the ferry-boat, I found sundry municipal
and parish functionaries laying their heads together,
ing through a break some hundred feet wide, at
they thrust their heads into the breach, as the
“Little Hero of Dutch Harlem," immortalized in
Sharpe's Magazine, thrust his finger into the leak
in the village dyke! The more the authorities
consulted, the swifter ran the current; sundry
houses were up to their eyes in water; there was
-no time for resolutions of enquiry, and appoint-
·ments of committees with power to act; so they
threw the responsibility upon an engineer, who, in
FATHER OF WATERS AND PENOBSCOT. 133
a day or two of sturdy fighting with timber piles,
straw, sand-bags, and dismembered steamboat hulks,
wrote himself down, in the annals of Algiers, as its
saviour. But there was a deal of dredging, and
sweeping, and spading done within its precincts,
for many a day afterward; and the track of the
Bingaman Race-course, that had been made the
passing medium of communication with rear
swamps, remained, for a long period, as "heavy"
as the heaviest better on the best bottomed horse,
on a stormy rainy day, could have desired.
The crevasses happening since then, have made
the one I speak of to be remembered as a mere in-
cident. I did not see them ; but I have a good
idea of the current tearing over thousands of well
ordered plantations; "sucking in" (as the phrase
goes) heavy steamboats, with sleepy pilots; and
freshening the Gulf of Mexico at new points.
Their occurrence, and the remedies applied, no
doubt suggested the following bit of correspond-
ence, picked up in a recent eastern freshet, and
delicately penned on the top of a sugar hogshead
staye :-
THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE PENOBSCOT.
My Dear Penobscot:
That you have lately had no communication
with your father the Father of Waters-has not
been my fault; and now you are not indebted to
my paternal solicitude only for these brief mes-
134
LEVEES AND CREVASSES.
sages, but also to the eccentricities of a chemist,
who dipped up the caskfull containing these reflec-
tions, to mix with your own bright and crystal
bubblings.
I have read in some newspapers hid away in my
bosom, and stolen from the cabin of a snagged
steamboat, that the wretched men of your neigh-
borhood are about damming you upon a large
scale, and curbing your mettle, at various points,
into an unpleasant stagnation; to stun you with
the noise and whirl of machinery; to blacken your
hopes with filthy dyes; and stain your virgin purity
with mountains of clay and charred timber. I can
advise you, in such a crisis; for I, too, have been
hardly dealt with, and have only lately learned
how to punish our oppressor, man, for his various
audacities and contumelies. As you well learned,
before civilization, with its barriers of confused
noise, intercepted our conversations, I was once
freer than now. I could stretch myself, when
wearied, over miles and miles of land; I could ven-
ture on a pic-nic far into the primeval forests of the
country; I could play pranks with the war-parties,
and tribe-hunts of the early Indians; I could sur-
prise the deer at his drinking, and overpower him
where the arrows of pursuers were hurtless; if the
great gulf, to whose luxury I administer, at any
time ruffled my temper, my liquid products sought
outlet into the many bays about him. But the
conqueror came, and fenced me in, and dug into
FATHER OF WATERS AND PENOBSCOT. 135
my very vitals, and gave me heavy burdens to
bear, and hideous noises to listen to, and bade my
roaring propensities cease, while my course of life
was made as monotonous as that of our bastard
relatives, the canals. For how many years have I
fretted and fumed at all these outrages! I have
leagued with your remote brother, the Missouri,
(a wild, untamed fellow,) the Ohio, (a gentle and
lovely daughter,) the Red River, (a perfect savage,)
the Yellow Stone, (a spiritless vagabond,) and with
increased strength made repeated efforts to regain
my former liberty. Perhaps, in your quiet nook,
you may have heard of the fright I last year gave
to my largest city; and how bravely I fought it,
week after week, until compelled, by sheer ex-
haustion, to give in. (I ruined the reputation of
two surveyors—that's some consolation.) But this
year, the victory is mine. I have avoided the city;
it contains material too powerful. I have directed
my forces against interior places. I could contain
myself no longer. Was I not choking with the
secretions of old age? Was I not becoming asth-
matic, through compression of my lungs? Were
not my oppressors threatening to dredge out the
Falls of St. Anthony, and hammer and forge me
far towards my very source? I made my selections;
and this early spring-time made a dash at Vicks-
burg, and at the parishes lower down. Houses,
and sugar-factories, cotton and cane, have all been
swept before me. I am as free as ever. I have ex-
136
LEVEES AND CREVASSES.
panded myself twenty miles at one point. I have
made a dozen new channels for future use at other
points. I have united myself, as of old, to Lake
Ponchartrain, and thrilling, even in my old age,
imprisoned. But oh, my oppressor man, leave me
my fond lake to meet day after day, and I will
withdraw forever from the contest!
You, my Penobscot, are young and lusty. Keep
cool for a time. Let the timbers fall across you,
and the stones and sand choke you. Bide your
revenge. The winter is coming. Freeze hard;
freeze low; melt quickly; summon all your en-
ergies; quicken the flow of your arteries; come
out in swelling grandeur; and all the timbers and
masonry of the land may not resist you.
I would say more; but the cask of the chemist
the waving of adieu from your almost heartbroken
father,
MISSISSIPPI.
XVI.
CAPTAIN RIC'S EPITHALAMIUM À LA CHARIVARI.
66 TIPITHALAMIUM. Anuptial song, or poem,
U in praise of the bride and bridegroom, and
praying for their prosperity.”
So speaks Dr. Noah Webster, from the first half
of the gigantic folio, which a minute since fell upon
my left foot, and gave a gooseberry twist to my
lips. (No small weight, to have half the English
language upon your corns !)
And were I sentimentally inclined, (the reader
will readily believe the contrary, under the fall of
the dictionary,) the solid matter-of-fact definition
above quoted, would afford an excellent theme.
· There seldom occurs a wedding, unless one of
the parties possesses a poetical friend, who exer-
cises his inkstand in composing an epithalamium,
(give a broad sound to the second "a," or we shall
never get on,) as his quid pro quo, for a slice of
138
CAPTAIN RIC's EPITHALAMIUM.
cake and a bridal kiss. The number of these bri-
fragrant with sighs, and, perhaps, with tears, must
be impossible of computation; although Hymen's
torch comes in contact with the rhythm so often, it
is no small wonder they are not burned into ashes.
Now I have often remarked, in the course of
these papers, that New Orleans was a very matter-
of-fact place, and induced small poesy of feeling.
(How the “Gazettes” collect so much of the latter,
week by week, is a puzzle to me.)
Be visibly surprised, then, to know that the defi-
unknown in New Orleans; and that the composers
of epithalamiums, upon many occasions, are num-
bered by the score; quite putting to the blush, in
their assemblage, the classical collections of ancient
humanity, termed choruses, whose doings and say-
ings may be thoroughly comprehended, on appli-
cation to any college freshman.
Long before the word democracy assumed the
power of a thunderbolt, it indulged its freedom of
speech and opinion in France, and in England, upon
the suitability of matrimonial matches. Not in the
gentlemanly way of fireside scandal, and tea-table
gossip, but by demonstrations forcible and con-
vincing. The old man and maiden, or the widow
of maturity and the beardless youth, coupling
themselves together before God and man, were met
CAPTAIN RIC'S EPITHALAMIUM.
139
with the frowns and arrows of outraged public pro-
priety.
To tell how, must be left to the chroniclers. I
say thus much only by way of preface to the fact,
that democracy of sentiment in New Orleans sits in
similar judgment at the present day.
The epithalamiums of the “Sheet Iron Band"
are proper municipal records in the Crescent City.
The Mayor and the Recorders do not sign them;
nor do clerks of courts copy them; but patriarchal
authority, nevertheless, by winks and nods, affixes
its sign-manual to thcir binding character. And
pose, who has never heard of the Sheet Iron Band,
or made acquaintance with its gallant captain,
whose head, by this time, must be as full of epi-
thalamiums, as are his notarial records of marriage
Who the Sheet Iron Band may be, as a public
body, is a matter of question. Individually, they
are “fellow-citizens," and musical doctors; they
are perpetual advertisers and puffers of acoustic oil;
they are strong and lusty; they are fond of horns;
they are men of brass; they are given to irony;
they appear "in the dim and dusky twilight,” like
the Israelites around Jericho, or the beleaguering
army about the walls of Prague, upon the simple
summons of their captain through the daily prints.
Their captain, however, is a notable. He is a
Czar of music; an Autocrat of noise; and carries
140
CAPTAIN RIC'S EPITHALAMIUM.
in his hand the wand of Prospero, with which, by
hook or crook, in some way unknown, he sum-
mons his Ariels to greet, with noise of horns and
trumpets, tin pans and sheet iron, the unequally-
yoked brides and bridegrooms; making the latter
to cry out like Ferdinand to his Ariel:
“Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here."
Disparity of age in matrimony is the crime to
be punished; to be punished by fine, the proceeds
whereof go to the support of charity. Neither
rest at night, nor quiet of mind by day, knows the
victim bridegroom, until the fine is paid.
The sanguine youth who is on his knees to a
venerable spinster, and her money-bags, associates
his thoughts of betrothal with fears of the Sheet
Iron Band. The gouty millionaire, who totters to
the feet of mammon-infatuated girlhood, sees
through the blushes of his future wife the smiles
of "Captain Ric," as he sits at his table to draw up
his company orders. Of little use is obstinacy,
pluck, and nerves of steel; the captain and his
men are superior. In the contest of mouth against
ears, muscles against nerves, perseverance against
resolution, experience, after weeks of siege, has
proved Captain Ric invincible.
I observed him a summer ago in the hall of the
Astor House. It was after dinner, and I saw by
the sparkle of his eye that the flavor of the Hock
141
was yet lingering about his palate. He sat on the
railing, cracking jokes for a half dozen friends; and
as many waiters, who were stealthily at hand. His
glossy hat was on one side. His vest was flashy
as the gown of a dowager. His chains were sug-
gestive of California. The turned-down collar, and
figured cravat, bespoke him the southerner. The
reaped stubble on his face was like the ashes of
roses. His shiny boots insulted the atmosphere
with their swinging. His cane was at rest on his
bies as I was used to hear it in the Commercial
Exchange, on St. Charles-street, when he was beat-
ing up recruits for the Mexican war, in a dress of
"Attakapas mixed," with a bright red sash about
his waist.
I thought then of the time I last observed him; ...
on the outskirts of the Swamp Faubourg of New
Orleans, of a foggy November night, seated on the
bank of a ditch, surrounded by his Sheet Iron
Band, endeavoring to blow out of a miserly Dutch-
man, who had' married his young housekeeper, a
few dollars for the Sisters of Charity. It was in
Hercules-street, and the attempt, in other hands,
would have been Herculean indeed.
There once lived in New Orleans a fair spinster,
whose mother had been a West Indian Creole, and
a schoolmate of the Empress Josephine. She was
proud and rich, relationless and single, and no one
142
CAPTAIN Ric's EPITHALAMIUM.
seemed to share her confidence or sympathy except
a lanky, gray haired notary, whose den was in
Lower Royal-street. He bought and sold her
slaves, leased her houses, collected her dividends,
and paraded her large tin cash box in a conspicu-
ous place within his office, as if to say, “trust in
me, for I am notary and agent to Mademoiselle —"
One evening our notary was sitting in his chair,
in a musing attitude, watching a mouse nibbling a
hole in a map. It was raining out-doors, and the
street was silent and almost deserted. Neverthe-
less he felt cheerful, for his attorney had that day
"put through” the Court of Probates, on a succes-
sion tableau, the sum of five hundred dollars for
"services” rendered the estate. And it was a sure
thing, too. The heir in France, when the per cen-
tage to the State was deducted, and the costs all
paid, might receive half that sum, and might grum-
ble; but no matter, the fish were caught in his net,
and he'd fry them. Perhaps he was thinking of
the heir; for, when the door suddenly opened, he
jumped from his chair and seized his ruler.
"Bon soir, Monsieur,” said a voice—the voice of
his aforesaid client, coming out of a pile of cloaks,
which were being taken off by a brace of mulat-
tresses, who performed escort duty with umbrellas.
.." Bon soir, Mademoiselle,” stammered the notary,
although not forgetting the appropriate emphasis
on the latter word, so ear-tickling to the ears of
fifty; and handing a chair.
CAPTAIN RIC'S EPITHALAMIUM.
143
The lady sat down and began blowing off the
ments; and our notary had leisure for surmise.
"What was in the wind? Was she seized with
premonitions of dissolution, and had she come to
make her will? Had she discovered that last sur-
plusage of per centage? Never before had she
been known to dare the rains of December, or the
muddy trottoirs of Royal-street."
“I have come," at last breathed the lady, (she
always breathed her words, instead of speaking
them, and I would her breathing could be trans-
lated like her French,) to employ you to draw a
marriage contract."
The notary bowed, and asked himself what rela-
tion had turned up at last.
"Between Mademoiselle .
“Why, that's yourself," shrieked the notary,
squeezing his pen to atoms of splits.
"Most certainly; but don't call so loud; the
neighbors will hear; between myself, then, and
Monsieur
tossing the pen furiously from him.
"Undoubtedly," replied the imperturbable
breather, while the servants by the door nudged
umbrellas.
“Ask me to draw up a marriage contract be-
tween yourself and my clerk, whom I picked up
on the leyee, just out of a Havre emigrant ship?
144
CAPTAIN Ric's EPITHALAMIUM.
It is an insult. Oh, if you want to marry, marry
me!" continued the notary, with his eye on the.
cash-box, (for well he knew, whoever the groom
might be, the real bride was under its green lid.)
"A very nice gentleman-so polite—so well
dressed the son of an exiled Countmand we ar-
ranged it last night-he is young and you are old
--for your past services I forgive you your allu-
sions, but henceforth discharge you”—were breathed
out gradually. And the breathing, and the cloaks,
and umbrellas, prepared to go.
As the door closed upon them the notary laughed
whe was himself—remembrances of that fee re-
Band."
The old lady and her escort turned up town.
“I'll have it drawn to-night or never,” said she.
“ To-night or never," whistled the wind as it swept
by her cloaks and tore over the umbrella.
The office of one notary is passed—and another
---and of a third; but they were closed. The Post-
Office building is reached. She looked opposite in
hopes of a light, but there was none; and Gotts-
chalk's drug lights blending with those flashing
from the Exchange-bar made the only illumination
visible.
The high stoop of the building adjoining, in
which the most gentlemanly of all created notaries
was wont to bow receipts for fees, and smile ac-
knowledgments through his juvenile spectacles,
CAPTAIN RIC's EPITHALAMIUM.
145
was too great a climb. Still onward to the Musson
buildings under the British Consulate. (Oh, that
she were English and could rush for a marriage
contract under the recent act of Victoria to the of-
fice where so much bonhommie is im-mure-d from
November to July!)
She was now in Canal-street about to cross it.
Never had she been there before; she was passing
the Rubicon of Creole prejudice, and entering on
the American portion of the city.
Still onward to the Verandah hotel: where, as
if frightened by the shadows of the gigantic St.
Charles, she turned the corner.
· But soon halted, as a bright light came flashing
through her cloaks, and bringing with it almost
the only English word she knew, “Notary,” from
a large sign hard by. .!
Crossing the street, or rather fording it, she
looked inside the building.
Sure enough, it was a Notary's office. There
were the big folios; the tin boxes; the maps; and
the hard seats.. Upon one of them sat “Captain
Ric;" and he was the owner of the office!
Captain Ric spoke French in his way, and soon
learned enough for the purpose; the contract was
drawn, and the hour the next day appointed for its
signing. When the clerkly groom was there, and
Captain Ric and a brace of authentic witnesses ;
and the carriages ordered for the cathedral were
146
CAPTAIN Ric's EPITHALAMIUM.
the night before were teeth-grinning over the
salvers that held the cake and wine.
Holy Church said its blessing on the bride, who
breathed her responses in a feeling manner; and
upon the bridegroom, who, while the priest was
mumbling his Latin, entered into a nice calcu-
lation of what the usufruct of his settlement
was worth, and wondered where was located his
property which the facetious Notary had duly im.
pressed on his mind was thenceforth subject to a
tacit mortgage.
Tbe happy couple were not subscribers to the
"Picayune" or they would have seen in its
columns, the ensuing day, a modest card of ano-
nymous authority, calling on the Sheet-Iron-Band
to appear that night for duty. Why and where
was left to be told by Captain Ric, who was about
to use his Notarial knowledge for charitable pur-
poses.
· Night came on, and Esplanade-street was black
with items of humanity. Levee clerks were there
with horns and tops of grate-pans. Tchoupitoulas-
street clerks were there with stove-pipes and
pokers. An amateur from Jefferson-parish was
would have been a matter of capital for the forges
at the Novelty Works. Trombones and fifes; a
modest drum ; and a cat-call exiled from the
Bowery Theatre pit were sprinkled through the
CAPTAIN RIC's EPITHALAMIUM.
147
crowd; and all arranged before the house of the
happy pair.
What noises came upon the midnight air for two
full hours let the habitans about the Mint and even
up to Circus-street, narrate-noises which would
have driven whole tribes of Indians mad for very
envy, could they have heard them. Noises which
brought the druggist hard by to his window with
dozens of bottles of acoustic oil, freshly labelled.
Noises which composed the nuptial song or poem;
but whether in praise of bride or bridegroom I
cannot, under favor of Dr. Webster's goodly defi-
nition, say. Perhaps of the bride, for, as was
before remarked, she had breathing powers worthy
of compliment.
But they accomplished their purpose, and when
the purse of " yellow boys" came from an upper
window the noises died away. And Captain Ric
was seen to lead away a lanky, grey-haired man
who had almost blown himself senseless with a
fish-horn. .
...It was the spurned" Notary' of Royal-street, who
had been taking revenge!
1
.
XVII.
RIDE TO THE BATTLE-GROUND A STORY OF
THE EVENTS OF THE BRITISH ATTACK ON
NEW ORLEANS IN 1815.
T HA-VE spoken of the Ponchartrain Railroad,
I and properly recognised its claims to be consid-
ered a remnant of primitive railroad management.
I ought not to forget mention of its neighbor,
which runs out of the same street, at right angles
barn of a depôt, and similar Lilliputian energies,
and train of hard-backed cars—the Mexican Gulf
Railroad-a chemin de fer not much better than the
Ponchartrain, but more promising in the future;
and extending towards the Gulf of Mexico easterly,
for a greater distance, through a much finer section
of country.
When some opportune earthquake shall come to
the aid of its directors-digging out and inclosing
UCU
A RIDE TO THE BATTLE-GROUND.
149
a proper harbor at its terminus—the original aims
of its founders and the hopes of its enthusiastic
president will be fulfilled, and the road be used for
other than mere excursionary purposes, by listless
time-killers and zealous Waltonians, who desire not
a breathing upon the transit of their sheep-head
and red-fish from native element to the frying-pan
or chowder-pot.
• Some three or four miles of travel on this Mexi-
can Gulf Railway will bring you to the spot famous
in American history as the locality where, in Jan-
uary, 1815, the American forces, under command
of General Jackson, obtained a victory over the
British invaders of Louisiana, and drove them from
its soil with great and disproportionate slaughter.
The spot is well known to orators and poetasters as
the Plains of Chalmette.
fortune to visit it, in company with one who had
been participant in the deeds of that occasion; one
who every year figures in an immense barouche as
a “veteran of 1815," at the head of a military street
procession, when the citizens of New Orleans, with
son and his comrades.
“Here we are," said he, as the cars stopped by
the side of a very unpoetical ditch, and in view of
immense fields of planted sugar cane, about six
150
A RIDE TO THE BATTLE-GROUND.
inches high, a thick swamp wood on our left, and
the turbid Mississippi at our right.
"This the battle-ground ?" replied I, rubbing
my limbs and arms, by way of compound interest
upon the dimes invested in the jolting ride.
"Aye, the battle-ground !” he rejoined with elo-
quent emphasis ; thirty-two years of intermediate
life rolling away from before his glowing vision, as
he thought of the day when, on the spot before
him, he battled an invading enemy. "Here is the
place where so many brave subjects of King
George took their last look on the objects of this
life. Brave fellows they were; for I never want
to see greater exertions in the very jaws of death
than were made that day by the troops of General
Pakenham."
“But before your after-reflections, my dear vet-
eran, give me a methodical story of the affair. It
will come pat and interesting, with the very ghosts
of the illustrious and departed heroes flitting
through these rows of sugar cane. And here's a
moistener of your memory, in the shape of some
eau de vie, 1805—ten years before your battle.”
Veteran (taking a pull.] “I'm no hand for
stories, and have been over the ground so often
that?
Manhattaner. "Over the ground so often;"
that's a good pun.
V. No undue interruption,—that I make out
but slip-shod rhethoric. N'importe, there's a belles-
STORY OF ATTACK ON NEW ORLEANS. 151
lettres savor about your cordial. But to begin.
You remember how unfortunately for us the in-
cursion of the British in Maryland turned out;
and how little, nevertheless, of advantage was at-
tained by the invaders. And how that soon after-
wards the British fleet, with the soldiers on board,
and sundry reinforcements, appeared in the Gulf,
meditating an attack upon New Orleans.
M. Who can forget these items! And you
might add to the list the coquetting between the
Spanish anthorities of Florida and the British
leaders; not to forget the “self-responsibility” of
old Hickory's summary treatment of the Spanish
Governor for his military flirtation.
ideas of the invading movement. We were in un-
certainty, too, as to where the attack would be
made. Those were not the days of steam-frigates,
and we were not afraid of any entrance over the
bar and passage, against the Mississippi current,
by the ships of war. The British had enough of
taking the latter into interior waters, when invad-
ing Chesapeake Bay. So our attention was mostly
directed to guarding the city by the little lakes.
The enemy had studied our topography, and had
strip of land which separated the river and the
gulf. About the 10th of December, the ships an-
chored off Cat and Ship Islands—you have seen
152
A RIDE TO THE BATTLE-GROUND.
them from your window at “ Montgomery's,"
while summering at the Pass.
M. And explored both of them, on divers fish-
ing excursions, with that prince of accomplished
gentlemen, General
S o f Concordia. Pleasant
spots both of them for a misanthrope; asylums,
mayhap, for decayed statesmen!.
V. The Spanish fishermen on the coast had
given information that Jackson : had some five
thousand men only, as available; and but sixteen
hundred of these near the city. Whereat the sol-
diery were much delighted with so encouraging a
prospect of invasion. The enemy were cautious,
however. They sounded for the best information
of a landing-place; and it turned out afterwards
Lieut. Peddie of the army, in the disguise of a
Spanish fisherman, made a reconnoitre of the coast.
He reported that a little bayou or canal, called
Bienvenue by the natives, and connecting General
Villeré's plantation with the Gulf, was just the
place to accomplish a landing. It was but ten or
LL
and that sort of thing upon the lakes. Very well
they were manned, too, and bothered the British
considerably. But the navigation of Lake Borgne,
and the bays about, was very uncertain. A good
strong north-westerly wind exposes flats enough
for the gambols of a thousand mermaids, and the
low water was the cause of the capture of some of
STORY OF ATTACK ON NEW ORLEANS. 153
their number, and the withdrawal of the remainder.
We had rumors of all these things in the city,
where all was activity and quick thought. Gene-
those at a distance; but it was necessary.
M. I can understand how. Your population was
mixed. No concert or harmony of opinion. And
in consequence of the changes and shiftings of civil
rule in previous years, the sands in the hour-glasses
of the municipal authorities did not fall so regu-
larly as they should.
V. And it was well Jackson was the man in
command, for some of the legislators then in ses-
sion, were very nervous and undecided. The citi-
zens were wide awake. The women were making
clothing for the volunteers expected from up the
river, and known to be in want of seasonable habil-
iments. Children were running bullets. On the
18th of December, Jackson reviewed the militiam
a battalion of colored men among them, who
handled the musket very well, considering how
much more familiar they were with hoes, and
hogsheads, and bales.
So things went on, until the 23d, two days be-
fore Christmas. In the morning arrived the Ten-
nesseeans, who encamped above the city. About
noon in came a son of General Villeré breathless
with haste and excitement, with the news that over
two thousand of the enemy, with General Keane,
8*
154
A RIDE TO THE BATTLE-GROUND.
had boated through Canal Bienvenue, and were
occupying his family plantation.
M. Twelve miles from the city, you said. Close
quarters that, and a handful, as it were, of raw mi-
litia, to combat disciplined regulars.
V. No sooner was this heard than Jackson was
on the move. Carrol's and Claiborne's brigades
were left to guard the rear approaches of the city;
for he knew not what diversion the British might
make from Lake Ponchartrain. The little war
river, and occupy a position on the opposite bank to
the Villeré plantation. By nightfall of that day
the little force under General Coffee was at the
enemy, penetrating into their camp while some of
them were at supper.
M. Egad, they got hotter coffee than they ex-
pected.
. V. And Carolina potatoes of a wrong sort for
comfortable digestion. The little schooner poured
a perfect shower of shot into the enemy's camp,
river. The British were completely at disadvan-
tage, taken by surprise; and their loss was severe.
Our men-particularly the civilians, militaire pour
le moment --were somewhat too impetuous, and in
the darkness of the night, some of them were sepa-
rated from their comrades, and taken prisoners.
We lost about seventy-five men in that way.
M, Qur legal friend - was of the number.
STORY OF ATTACK ON NEW ORLEANS. 155
He complained bitterly of the bad feed he got for
several days, and of the horridly stupid conversa-
tion he was compelled to listen to. To believe his
yarns, I'm thinking the midnight attack and the
capture of prisoners was a good thing for General
Jackson. It gave him a prestige and every pris-
oner multiplied his force ad libitum-mere legal
fictions you know !
V. Perhaps so. But by daybreak Jackson had
retreated for a short distance; and the morning
light showed him what a fine position he was in
for an entrenchment. Before him was this fine
plain now stretching out before us. The river and
the schooners Carolina and Louisiana protected his
right flank; the cypress swamp his left flank.
There was a canal in front, (it had a name then-
Rodriguez,) which could be deepened; and behind
latter cotton bags, as you know—they are famous
cessary means were employed, and in two days a
perfectly secure fortification protected New Or-
leans from the enemy.
M. I have always wondered why the British
leaders remained idle so long : why they al-
lowed the making of these entrenchments with
out attack.
V. It was a great mistake. But they had a
poor opinion of our engineering; and regarded
our troops as mere handfuls to the antagonist force
156 · A RIDE TO THE BATTLE-GROUND.
they expected to bring. Besides, all their troops
were not landed. At daybreak on the twenty-
eighth the enemy were descried advancing in two
columns; one on the river road; one by the mar-
gin of the swamp. A brief engagement ensued, in
which they were repulsed with great loss to them-
selves, and but little to our own. This temporary
check satisfied their invading disposition, and they
awaited the reinforcements which were expected
with General Lambert. They next set about
erecting three batteries—one at the river side, one
at the swamp edge, and one directly before our po-
sition ; with a parapet of clay in line, the embra-
sures of which were cased with sugar hogsheads.
These latter were unfortunate things to use, as it
subsequently turued out. They thought the sugar
would afford an elastic resistance to shot like as
sand; but the cannon balls drove through it, and
many were injured by the splinters from the hogs-
heads. This was but three hundred yards distant
from us. A cold and cheerless time they had of
it. It was the rainy season of the year; drizzle
and fogs; and water all about them from a breach
in the Levee made by the orders of Jackson,
through which sullenly flowed the Father of waters
to pay his respects to the new-comers.
M. Pooh! drizzle and fogs were the very things
they liked. Why should a British soldier be dif-
ferent from a British sailor who got drunk with
delight while entering the fog-bewildered docks of
STORY OF ATTACK ON NEW ORLEANS. 157
London one November day after "a month of lay-
ing-to in the miserable sunshine of Naples !"
V. New-Years's eve was a busy time for the
enemy. How they worked with pickaxes and
shovels! They were in good earnest, too, as you
might see by the shoulder-knots of officers bobbing
up and down at their labors.
M. And you a nice distance off watching them
as coolly as a butcher regards a grazing ox whose
fate is sealed for a holiday-dinner. Did you make
no demonstration ? ..
. V. How foolish that would have been? They
expected we would have come out to meet them;
but in a field fight we knew where the odds lay.
Five thousand against twelve thousand! No odds
when Mexicans are in the maximum catalogue ;
but “when Greek meets Greek," etc. On New-
Year's morning they commenced cannonading us
from their batteries; and we returned the compli-
ment with compound interest, dislodging their
cannon in a few hours, and forcing them to fall
back in a new position.
M. What were the sloops-of-war doing ?
V. The poor Carolina was fastened in position
by the current. There was no wind; and after a
brave return of cannon shot to some mounted bat-
teries on the river bank of the British camp, a few
hot shot wrapped her in flames. The Louisiana
was more fortunate, and weighed anchor out of
their gun-reach. The overflowing of the plain
158
A RIDE TO THE BATTLE-GROUND.
below our position was unfortunate in one respect,
as it assisted the British in their exertions to bring
up cannon and ammunition from the fleet. For
five days in January they worked at the digging a
canal from the Gulf to their camp. And thus by
the seventh of January the British force, by the
arrival of General Lambert's reinforcement num-
bered twelve thousand. Some of the prisoners of
the twenty-third fortunately escaped, and gave us
an inkling of what was to be l'ordre du jour.
M. Twelve thousand men ! the flower of the
British army! How well they must have appear-
ed from your position !
V. “Ah !" (heaving a sigh with a pull at the
cordial flask,) you are thinking of some holiday
parade on your New York Park grounds upon
some sunny day. Faith, mon cher ami, they didn't
appear at all by reason of the fog which was heavy
enough to give the cows a bronchitis, and as disa-
greeable to breathe as the smoke of a cabbage-leaf
regalia cigar. The signal-so the escaped prison-
ers told us—was to be the ascent of two rockets at
either wing of their army. We watched for the
pyrotechnic display with more earnest attention
than any juvenile escaped from school employs at
London-Vauxhall, or Gotham-Niblo's when the
fire-works are momently expected. The Barrata-
ria pirates and some veteran French cannoneers
were our artillerists at the embrasures of the en-
trenchment. Behind them were the sharpest
STORY OF ATTACK ON NEW ORLEANS. 159
shooters of the force-Tennesseeans and Keutuck-
ians (who were as cool as if out on a buffalo hunt)
with their rifles. And relays of men behind to
load, that there might be no intermission in the
firing. Squadrons of cavalry were at the right and
left flank, and in the rear. On the morning of the
eighth the looked for signal was seen, and hailed
with loud cheers from our forces. I dare say the
enemy was puzzled enough to know what we were
cheering about, for the fog was as bad as cannon-
smoke. And soon after the advance of the British
forces were seen coming to meet us with fascines of
sugar-cane and scaling ladders. On they came, nearer
and nearer, as, in years before, their ancestors had
advanced upon the redoubts at Bunker-Hill. We
were prepared for them, and just as they were
nearing the ditch, the signal for firing was given.
From our embrasures, and from the top of the
the loaded rifles were passed from behind in ex-
change for the discharged ones, became continual.
I was at the right flank among the cavalry, and it
seemed as if a row of furnaces were giving out
their red heat. The enemy were stricken as with
one single concentrated blow. Every other man
in the ranks had fallen; and throwing down fas-
cines and ladders the brave fellows who were left
hastened back to their comrades. There was a
brief pause. The stragglers were rallied, and fresh
160
A RIDE TO THE BATTLE-GROUND.
sheets of liquid fire which our forces continued to
pour forth. You would have thought our men
had breakfasted on lead and made coffee out of
powder for years, so cool were they with cannon
and rifle. On came the British. But it was no
battle. Although the balls of their muskets
whistled merrily over our heads and plumped into
the clay and the wedged cotton at our feet, the
slaughter was all on one side. Yet they came on
with braye impetuosity. Some of them pulled off
their shoes to afford better foothold and jumped
into the ditch to clamber over our position ; but as
they came up by hundreds, the rifles of the Ten-
nesseeans picked them off as if they had been black-
birds. They charged-officers and privates indis-
criminately—to the very muzzles of our guns, only
to fall back lifeless or desperately wounded into
the damp and muddy ditch—which was literally
filled with bodies. Their onset was so impetuous
at our flank by the river-side that some of them
clambered on the wall (to so call it) and penetrated
into camp, where the survivors were surrounded
_and taken prisoners. I shall never forget the look
of one noble officer-a colonel of the line—as he
jumped on a cotton bag, exclaiming, "courage, boys,
we have them”—only to fall back the next minute
with a rifle-ball in his brain. Three times the
enemy came up manfully to the attack; and, I be-
lieve, if Generals Pakenham and Keane had kept
whole bodies, the advance would have continued
STORY OF ATTACK ON NEW ORLEANS. 161
until the army was half destroyed. As it was,
seven hundred of them were killed, and some four-
teen hundred wounded. Our own casualties did
not reach seventy-five altogether.
We all thought they would renew the attack;
for at nightfall they kept their camp-fires briskly
burning, and were engaged in making batteries.
But these latter were but designed to cover their
retreat, which was commenced that night unmo-
lested by us. Some generals might have quitted
entrenchments to paralyse them yet more, thus
disabled and in retreat. But Jackson was con-
tent to let well alone. A battle won with a clean
list of killed or wounded is better than a distin-
ended the Battle of New Orleans.
M. The last engagement of any conseqnence
upon American soil. May it continue the last.
Puff-puff-came along the little locomotive and
its long car behind; and re-taking seats we forgot
our military sighings in the discussion for the
benefit of a fat friend on an adjoining seat, of the
momentous question whether it was orthodox to
eat rum-omelette with “pompano"-fish.
XVIII.
THE PRESS OF NEW ORLEANS.
Dules.
T ITERATURE in New Orleans has been a great
U deal like a moss rose in a plantation of Canada
thistles.
But since the American portion of the citizens
have reclaimed a thousand acres of swamp, and
patronized granite for pavements, and catalogued
some enterprising citizens, (the best of whom are
the least talked about,) and since, too, the Saxons
of the Second Municipality have rescued from the
Gauls of the First Municipality a bank or so and a
brace of railroads, (abused heretofore in these pa-
pers,) the said literature is a recognized and talked
of thing in the Crescent City:
If we felt disposed to give some of the citizens
(as the result of humble inquiries) some statistics of
the authors and "authorlings," bards and " bard-
lings," and general writers who are covered up
THE “PICAYUNE” AND “DELTA."
163
with calculations in the "cotton and sugar line,"
and practical investigations into political economy,
as well as the results effected by certain daring
ones of those who have ventured to believe that a
man who could conceive a pleasant story, or throw
off a light-hearted sonnet, was not unfitted for
"'change," Crescent citizens might stare a little and
be vain to think that letters flourished so well
among swamps and English brokers. But we in-
tend no directory for home departments, nor guide-
book for strangers.
Not the least effective for the cause of letters in
New Orleans are its newspapers.
sessed very distinctive and celebrated character-
istics.
There is no reason why every gazette, like every
possess its peculiar features. But I submit it as a
“fixed fact,” that there is scarcely one out of every
score which marks itself differently from its con-
temporaries. Every nineteen are apparently “got
up” out of the same inkstand, and “worked off"
on the same press. The type may be different, the.
advertisers may vary, and the politics may be
"buff,” or “blue;" but as regards rhetoric, vigor
of thought, and originality of conception, they are
in the same dead level.
There is not division of labor enough among
their conductors, and the one newspaper in the
164 THE "PICAYUNE" AND "DELTA.”
score possessing distinctive features is generally
presided over by a rare exception of versatility.
Newspaper talent nowadays is too much scattered.
If the sheriff could shut up a hundred or two es-
tablishments, and if the best of the editors thus
dis-executionized could be sifted out, and their
talent properly combined and distributed, we
might have that which we have not now, a paper
in the United States at half the cost, and twice the
excellence of the London Times; and editorials,
instead of being idiosyncrasies, would be essays
upon the history of the day worthy of posterity.
America has given the world a printing press
which is emblazoned in the History of Art. Who
will next bid arise in her borders a Joint Stock
Company for the publication of a newspaper, pay-
ing liberally for good gazette rhetoric, and so en-
rich the stockholders while benefitting society with
a good newspaper ?
It was the New Orleans Picayune newspaper
which first gave a tone to the Crescent City Press.
In its infancy, it was an audacious little sheet; and
when it came among its heavy-headed, half French,
half naturalized compeers, created an impression
something like that of a lively pin-wheel of a fire-
work evening in the midst of some complicated as-
sortment of powder and sulphur, bolstered up by a
dozen hickory poles. It dared to joke with sugar,
and to treat cotton as a light affair. It sneezed at
tobacco, and waxed merry in the midst of tallow
THE "PICAYUNE" AND "DELTA.”
165
and ship chandlery. It wrote sonnets upon grave
officials, who were accustomed to universal homage.
bread, it was as full of witticisms as one of Thack-
eray's dreams after a light supper. It picked the
locks of municipal portfolios, and sported with
criminal justice. It taught the recorder that he
was a born wit, and that the true way to enjoy his
situation was to extract fun out of every prisoner
arraigned. It woke up the captains of the police
guard, and taught them to be funny. It ran with
race-horses, and picked up all the good sayings on
the turf. It lounged about the Levee, and hunted
out rats and loafers with puns. In its office was a
kaleidoscope, wherein every-day thoughts and
every-day occurrences took new hues and curious
combinations. If you saw a good thing floating
over the country, making merry the farmers by
their harvest-door loungings or apple-browning fire-
sides, or travellers who forgot to yawn on steam-
boats and on railways, and serving, with larger
newspapers, as the raisin in cider bottles, to work
into effervesence—you were sure to notice, at the
conclusion, as inevitable as the word "Bacon” to
a vigorous excerpt-"N. 0. Pic.”
“Who were the editors ?” asked the outsiders :
“• Phazma' and 'Straws,'” replied the Crescenter.
He was sure every one must know them. Not
know the Brothers Field ? . Jim Fields, who had
166
THE "PICAYUNE” AND “DELTA."
kept audiences in boxes and pit on the roar by the
hour, and who had turned editor ? Or Mat Fields,
his sedater brother, whose heart was like a well,
and deep enough for any honest human bucket to
descend and take a draught of pure, reviving,
sparkling friendship. Not know these ? why,
where was the use of living ?
6. Phazma' and 'Straws' are poets, sir," he
would continue; “none of your sleepy ones, who
weave their doleful cantos as a sawney Scotchman.
weaves his rag carpet, with motley hues, but
heavy texture; none of your namby-pamby ones,
who talk to sensible merchants of honeysuckles
and frisking lambs; none of your blubbering ones,
who weep over human nature in lines like a yard-
stick; but poets who eat rhyme, talk rhyme, and
think rhyme, and who only have to shake their
heads a little and out pop the sparkling thoughts,
musically tripping over the paper on all the oddest
of. Belligerent poets, too, sir! It was a perpetual
suit they waged in the Court of the Muses. 'Phazma
versus Straws. Now one plaintiff in error—now
the other. Now one repellant-now the same one
respondent. Law and fact, sir, every inch of it.
Do you think I could eat my muffins of the foggy
groggy December mornings, when the air about
the Levee was as thick as the mouth of a coal-pit,
the Lake End without dipping into a sonnet or the
THE “PICAYUNE" AND "DELTA.” 167
stanzas, or the what-not-metre of the belligerents ?
No, sir."
“Phazma and Straws!” With “Kendall” to
unbottle the tact, and "Lumsden" to distribute it
with untiring industry, the four raised a paper from
experiments to magnificent success. Everybody
was reading it; so everybody must advertise in it.
Besides it made its appearance of a Sunday morn-
ing, when your day of rest gives best inclination
to read, and omitted the Monday issue to give the
Sabbath to the writers and the pressman, in a sen-
sible way. It couldn't avoid success no more than
clever girlhood can avoid a husband.
Kendall, too, had his days and nights of adven-
ture on the prairies, and in the Texan fights, and
in the far-off odious Mexican captivity. His ad-
venture spiced the paper, and took the edge off
all ill humor when the cargo missed its ports, or
cotton fell from the notch the foreigners last hung
it at.
.“ Straws” and “Phazma” left it. The pens of
heavy artillery now. hunted for its columns. Its
champagne became rich port. Recorders' Courts
1
reporters to whom the connection was to be a cap-
ital, like “student of Sir Astley Cooper," or law-
clerk with the then Attorney General Butler to
your sawbones and brief-perusers. The paper
waxed dignified in its growing age, and punned
but now and then.
THE “PICAYUNE" AND "DELTA.” 168
“Phazma" shortly after died, with the love of
the beautiful and the appreciation of the grotesque
as strong as ever; nothing dimmed by mortal con-
flict with that stern-faced ravager which steals
away the breath while yet it plants fallacious roses
on the cheeks.
"Straws” « drummed” subscribers with his tell-
ing and artistic "Reveille" in St. Louis. Kendall
returned from captivity to be famous and write
books. Lumsden held the reins of business, and
had his turn of published adventure on the Rio
Grande, and in the mountain-fastnesses of Mexico,
amid all the stirring scenes which gave a name to
one who died to make Death yet more illustrious
as the conqueror of victors. Other partners less
known, but as sturdy workers, shared in the pros-
perity. “Porter," the facetious, died at his post,
and the laughers in his time of merry health have
ever since worn in their memories the weeds of
cordial regret.
Precocious and sprightly as it was in its youth,
the " Pic" is dignified and eloquent in its growing
age. "May its shadow never be less."
I was in the cabin of the tow-boat, which was
"table-spooning” our gallant ship up the Missis-
sippi, as narrated in a previous sketch, when I first
saw a number of the “New Orleans Delta,” got up
and printed since my leaving Manhattan, by a grad-
uate of the Picayune office. The type was good;
the reading smelt freshly; the jokes were credita-
THE "PICAYUNE" AND "DELTA."
169
ble; and the items of the day served up with
piquant sauce. The name, too, was characteristic
and local, like " Picayune," and like the Delta of
the Mississippi, many-mouthed; nor the less val-
uable for being classical.
proval self-complacently over my shoulder.
I was of his opinion, and he, poor fellow, had
not seen a paper in a three week's passage; so I
forgave him the impoliteness.
The "Delta" commenced its career like a run-
away schoolboy. It asked favors of nobody, but
made itself known by a series of bold adventurings
in the meadows of items, and the shrubbery of gos-
sip. It despoiled the orchards of " exclusivism” of
their holiday fruit. It brought the eye-glass of
wondering merchants from vest pockets to look at
the impudent sheet. Politicians laid in wait the
newsboys (who liked the name, and rang all possi-
ble changes on the second syllable) to see what
new joke was perpetrated on themselves or adver-
saries.
The • Picayune” had always joked at classes,
or run the saw on “genera." The "Delta" singled
out individual characteristics and spitted “species.”
The one, if it threw snuff in the eyes, courteously
begged pardon for the offence; the other took one
eye at a time for the operation, and laughed at the
mishap. Not that you could ever indict it for ma-
licious prosecution. It took care to have a sem-
170
THE “PICAYUNE” AND “DELTA."
blance of probable cause, and be too good-humored
for malice.
Not a town topic existed but the “Delta” treat-
éd it. It talked with readers as readers talked
among themselves, boldly and unreservedly. It
set expediency at defiance; it listened to no coun-
sellings. Like a spoiled child it had its own way
with everybody,
Nothing is too "radical” for its swallow. Its
columns are open to “ the people.”. Kid gloves it
professes to cleanse by a new process (caustic pot-
ash) which is sure to eat into the material at the
same time. It has its editors, but not half a dozen
subscribers could say who they were. - It rallies
around it a corps of writers, who, by the prodigal
display they make of it, have not learned Saxon
for nothing. There is poetry enough in its col-
umns year by year to make a dozen Appendixes
to Griswold's Poetry of America; dramatic criti-
cisms which have the merit of plain talk, and
which court no favors; and dry jokes that are of
great importance to the country subscribers who
attend barbecues, and are expected to lead the
" toasts." The pens in its employ possess facility
of rhetoric, not the least remarkable for their un-
weariedness of excellence. (This facility some day
will be fatal, if for one week the "judgment" leaves
its stand behind the counter.)
It is eminently a universal paper. For the lawyer
the "Delta” has its court scenes and counsel jokes.
THE “PICAYUNE" AND "DELTA.” 171
For the doctor its ounces of good-natured sarcasm
and solid advice. For blundering officials its
cushion of thistles. For popular excitement its
quota of enthusiasm. For the clergy a dose of
ter's fireside its epitome of city items ready spiced
for the family reading. For the merchant its saws
on the tricks of trade.
The “ Picayune" and "Delta" are the exponents
abroad of the New Orleans press, and therefore I
have selected them from the host of well conducted
journals for which the city is celebrated. Some
have chosen to think them rivals. I humbly con-
ceive this can never be; although it is probable
had there never been a "Pic." there never would
have been a "Delta." The one is rigid in its
propriety without sacrificing its piquancy; the
lishment go to the sheriff the next day in a
suit for libel. The one has for rule the safe one of
“policy;" to the other its dictionary knows no
such word. As I said before, the "Delta," like a
spoiled child, has always had its own way, and
ever will have, so long as strong Levees render sub-
marine apparatus useless commodities in the Cres-
cent City.
The New Orleans " Commercial Bulletin” sus-
tains to the mercantile community of its locale the
same position occupid by the “Courier” and “Ad-
vertiser" at Boston; or the “ Courier and En-
172 "COMMERCIAL BULLETIN," " COURIER."
quirer” and “ Journal of Commerce” at New
York; its editorials aim rather at the solidity of
dignified comment than at the piquancy of gossip;
its policy is eminently national and conservative;
and its advertising columns are grand bazaars of
trade wherein merchants" set forth” their wares by
the million-dollar-worth.
The “Courier" and the." Bee” (L'Abeille) are
papers chiefly in the Franco-American interest, and
for northerners in the Crescent City emulous of ac-
quiring the reading of French are capital exercises
the "matter” of the French sides being render-
ed on the reverse of their sheets into Saxon. If
- all the articles of these Gazettes possessed the brill-
iancy and spirit of their opera-critiques there
would be no “Daily” in New Orleans more in de-
mand for “Exchange."
The “Delta” since its establishment has boiled
over twice; and the “ Crescent" and "True Delta”
have emerged from the overflow. The former has
already grown like an Anak; and the parent
source may well be nerved to greater exertions,
lest in time to come, as regards both the last-named
Gazettes, its subscribers remind it of the old
rhyme :
“To teach his grandson draughts, his leisure he'd employ,
Until, at last, the old man was beaten by the boy."
XIX.
LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD.
W HITHER bound, mon ami?" said I, one
W morning, to an acquaintance whom I found
airing a carpet-bag in the portico of the St. Charles
Hotel."
“I'm taking my bag to have a little repairing
done to the lock, for I think of taking "a-run'-up
to Louisville this afternoon."
"A run-to Louisville--why, it's a thousand
miles—and only a carpet-bag !” stammered I.
"Pooh, pooh!" he rejoined, mumbling his after-
breakfast cigar with great nonchalance, “that's
nothing after you've lived in these parts a few
years. Why, M- went to Europe yesterday on
two hours' notice, and will be back almost as
quickly as you will reach Manhattan if you play
sight-seer by the wayside. Splendid boat this after-
noon, too—Peytona—a regular steam race-horse."
174 LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD.
“I'm sorry I'd not known this before. I was
going myself in a day or two, as soon as I found a
boat.”
“Found a boat! Come, now, that's good! Do
you go looking after them with a telescope? Why,
my boy, there's twenty at the Levee any day. I'll
introduce you to one of our old stagers, one of the
first merchants, who thinks it a capital joke when
he hears the last bell of a steamboat ringing, to get
quietly up from his counting-house desk, lock his
drawers, and tell his clerks he's going to Vicksburg,
just as coolly as he informs them of an absence to
dinner. And that isn't all: he either steps on
board just as the boat pushes off, or takes a small
boat after her. Bound to go when he says so.
Come up with your luggage; the clerk's a particu-
lar friend, and I'll promise you the best of state-
rooms and fare."
"I'll do it," said I, grasping his hand.
And we met in the early evening on the "Pey-
tona."
I had not been used to stepping on board just at
shoving off, nor had I quite accustomed my com-
prehension to the calling a four or five day's sailing
"a run," so I was down, with ample time to spare,
and stood upon the boiler-deck, surveying the
prospect, by the side of a nervous man, who declared
he could feel the steam through his boots.
If ever there existed a commercial beehive, here
was one: clerks, porters, draymen, hackmen,
LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD. 175
steyedores, deck-hands, passengers, and loafers,
swarming in and out the cellular passages by the
grain and cotton bags, hoghsheads, and corn sacks,
far as the eye could reach. A dozen bells were
ringing like mad, and the air was dark with the
smoke from the firing-up of the dozen steamboats
about, which lay side by side, head up to the piles
of the Levee, like a column of marine soldiery. All
about their stems and sterns, audaciously dashing
under the very wheel-paddles, were scores of little
boats filled with pedlary. The Jew was there
with his hundred-bladed penknives, sponges, and
metallic tablets; the Yankee with his curious
knick-knacks brought from every auction mart in
town; nondescripts with oranges, bananas, and
conch-shells, which latter, now and then, were
blown with sound resembling the bray of a mule
when touched with colic, to which the steamboat
bells tolled out their music exultingly.
"D'ye see that boat, the third from us?” asked
my compagnon du voyage, who now had joined the
throng about us
“She with the heaviest smoke and loudest
bell?"
“The same."
: "She'll beat us on the start. How eager to push
off!"
My friend gave me one of his peculiar laughs,
and added, "If she backs out into the stream
before day after to-morrow, I'll forfeit your good
176 LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD.
opinion. That puffing, and wheezing, and bell-
tolling is all a sham-a trick to catch passengers.
She's the only boat of her trade in, and will keep
up the fuss until every other neighboring steamer
has left; then her smoking, and wheezing, and
bell-tolling will cease until tomorrow afternoon,
when a second edition will be issued, and so on till
some other of the line is up. It's a regular thing
with some boats.”
“And do the public stand it ?”
"Her public have to; she's Hobson's choice to
day. Do you remember Tom — he who played
· the Kent bugle so effectually at Captain Ric's last
concert? He was once on board of her when all
this fuss was going on. By-and-by, both captain and
pilot were ashore some distance off, and Tom
mounted to the wheel-house, for he's a bit of an
amateur pilot, as he is an amateur in music. Wink-
ing to two or three of his friends on the Levee, off
went the lines; the wheels were revolving back-
ward at the time furiously, and off she spun into
the river, upsetting a brace of fat darkies who were
carrying supplies aboard, and sending a dozen
conch-shells from a little wherry behind, to amuse ·
the mermaids and catfish below. 'Stop her! cried
the captain, running to the water's edge and ges-
ticulating furiously. The pilot fell to swearing, (as
all pilots do in emergencies,) and the crowd about
hurrahed. Tom headed her up river, and away she
went for a few lengths, but he hadn't calculated
LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD. 177
the current; and the first thing he knew, he was
against a seven hundred tonner, just in, full of
Dutch emigrants, battering against her sober sides
like a battering-ram at the walls of Jerusalem, and
frightening the poor jaw-breaking linguists out of
their senses.
"It took Tom some time to work out of that
scrape. Old- , who was then District Attorney,
gave it as his opinion that the proceeding was 'flat
piracy;' but he couldn't find a Grand Jury to do
anything but laugh at him, and call it a good joke.
But here we are off.”
And the Peytona spun into the stream like a
mettled courser at the drum-tap. She was evi-
dently puffed with self-conceit of her own power
and ability; for not a stair deigned to creak under
the loads of baggage and fat humanity which had
hurried up and down from deck to deck; not an
inch of carpet in the splendid saloon had dimmed
beneath the tread of passengers; her smoke belched
upward with all the pomposity of furnace-kind-
ling; and her wheels beat the turbid waters with
solid pats which were intended to strike suitable
terror into the mammoth catfish round about.
The “Peytona” was built like all other Western
river steamboats, with an elliptical hull beaten out
at the poles more than is geometrical in an ellipse,
and upon the hull sat the machinery, duly im-
prisoned and overlaid by the mansion-like cabin,
which was pillared up from bow to stern. A flight
178 LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD.
of steps from the water's edge gave passage to the
boiler-deck and entrance to the two saloons beyond.
Still another deck was over the inclosed cabin,
whither the captain and pilot went into appropriate
exile whenever the boat was on its winding way,
and where children gamboled, (is vice so young
on the Mississippi River, I think I hear some
listener say,) while their papas smoked in active
opposition to the puffing escape pipes at their side.
We swept by the city. A mile or so of
shipping to eye, with here and there some carayan-
serai, like cotton-yards, and the houses had longer
separation between them. Here was Lafayette,
the asylum of anglicised Dutchmen-next we bent
into Carrollton-and then commenced the monoto-
nous scenery of the Mississippi River—flat land
and winding river, trees and sedgy grass, with
occasionally a bit of bluff, with elevation like the
snow-hills your school-boy builds in the midst of a
New Hampshire winter.
Night came on, and with it the tea-urn-after
which I plunged into a state-room, arranged my
wardrobe for the next four days, and settled down
to sleep, thinking of "Longfellow” in the narrow
berth, and his poetry, especially of the lines-
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is my destined end or way;
But to live that each to-morrow
Finds me further than to-day.
Further up the Mississippi, of course,
LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD. 179
One day upon a Mississippi steamboat is generally
a stereotype of all the other days of passage. There
may sometimes occur a snagging, or a fire, with
perhaps a collision, to vary the incidents of each
sluggish hour; but since the river navigation is so
well understood, and captains and pilots, by becom-
ing owners of the crafts they guide, are more care-
ful, a total want of catastrophe is the most expect-
able by even nervous ladies.
One day, then, is the sample of all--and how
does it wear away?
The dull light of morning becomes brighter and
roseate over the tree-tops about, as the steam-packet
still puffs and paddles her way along.
As the sun emerges from the forests about, sleepy
travellers emerge from their state-room doors on
the outside guard passage-way, and in every variety
of demi-toilette, swallow the fresh air. A heavy-
eyelided negro will be scattering dust in the cabin
with serious intentions of accomplishing the opera-
tion usually termed "sweeping." Another of the
same description will be summoning courage for
the exertion of shaking the large cabin-bell, whose
sound is intended to diminish a passenger's quota
of sleep. Other sleepy waiters will emerge from
unknown parts of the boat, and attend to the com-
plicated machinery of the table; which by their
exertions (although five minutes before it had
scarcely afforded room for the lounging legs of a
180 LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD.
Hoosier,) soon becomes a long table ready for
breakfast, dinner, or supper, at the appropriate
hours for each meal. At the noise of the clicking
plates, and rattling knives and forks, the hungry
passengers from door-gaping state-rooms, and from
side doors, and through the windows from the
hurricane-deck, watch with stomachic interest the
evolutions of the waiters. They anathematize the
laziness of this one, or commend the briskness of
that one. They count the plates, and endeavor to
smell out the bill of fare as opens the pantry door.
And with their eyes they measure the bread which
the cabin-boy carefully puts out by every plate,
delicately plunging a fork into an immense bread-
tray full of bread-chunks, and then executing a
quit-claim by a dexterous shove of his dexter fore-
finger. By degrees there accumulate before the
watching eyes hot corn-bread and rolls, steaks and
chops, while pitchers of milk and basins of sugar are
deployed in the centre of the table. A fat waiter en-
ters with a coffee urn, which is bubbling musically. A
retinue of leaner waiters, similarly armed, with now
and then an urn of tea, follow him. Diffident passen-
gers edge slowly up. The "old travellers ” march
toward the head of the table with confident air, and
selecting a particular chair, stand behind it and eye it
as if determined to risk life itself before surrender-
ing up a seat or missing the first dive at a beef-
steak and plate of rolls. Other gentlemen have
walked towards that steamboat sanctum sanctorum
LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD. 181
ycleped ladies' saloon, and self-complacently watch
the opening doors, for well they know THEY have
a seat reserved. The hungry diffidents and “old
uns” below are eyeing with envious sullenness
these aforesaid reserved seats and their reserved
future occupants. Presently the captain descends
from his place of exile on the hurricane-deck, takes
off his hat, and polishes his red forehead with a
still redder handkerchief, and marches dignifiedly
to the top of the table, followed by admiring eyes
at the foot. The admiring eyes soon reassume an
hungry aspect. The bell rings, and down drop
the passengers and proceed to attack the edibles.
The ladies' table is a complete battle-field of affecta-
tion struggling with the appetite which a river-
breeze induces. Steamboat coffee is criticised-
biscuits are nibbled—and perhaps, in a certain
quarter, a plate of hot rolls furnishes text for an
anti-dyspeptic lecture from an old lady, to whom
dry toast proves a great consolation.
Breakfast over, the ladies retire to their toilette,
or their lace and worsted work, or perchance a
book; others of them enliven the cabin with
music from the grand piano which every first-class
boat provides for company. The gentlemen seek
the boiler deck, where they sit in gaping arm-
chairs, and talk, or read in their books with col-
ored covers the various wonders of modern ro-
mance; or hang their legs over the rail and smoke
in musing silence as they gaze at the scenery about.
182 LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD.
Politics is the prevailing theme; although now and
then a reckoning of distances affords an exciting
topic of conversation for the moment. The waiters
within have taken to pieces the complicated table
machinery, only to put the pieces together again in
a few hours. At one of the bits of table there is
card-playing. Some gamblers are near by watch-
ing an opportunity to join the party. But they
are compelled to be cautious and diplomatic; for
gambling on the western waters, like watch-stuff-
ing in goodly Manhattan, has come to be under-
stood; and there is little card-fleecing nowaday on
the Mississippi first-class packets. At another table
a bilious-looking youth is endeavoring to write;
but gives up in despair upon hearing a passer-by
remark, sotto voce to a friend, " how proficient that
young man is in short-hand hieroglyphics.” At
another table some infatuated youths have com-
menced a game of chess; but before five moves a
castle urged by the shaking boat as she labors over
a sand bar, and which was still hemmed in by un-
moved pieces, gives check.by a strange freak, and
bishops and knights prance about merrily.
On drives the boat; perhaps stopping “ on a
swamp-bound coast” to land a passenger or take
one up; in either case shoving a narrow plank
ashore and sending him to walk it as if both him-
self and plank were troubled with an ague fit no
patent medicine could palliate. Or the boat stops
at some town or city builded almost among a pri-
LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD. 183
meval forest; and the passengers step ashore to
stretch their legs and walk a bit through the town
or buy refreshments.
Or the boat hungers for wood, and at a given
signal there pushes out from the river bank a flat
boat loaded with a dozen cords. A line is thrown
and the flat boat made fast to the steamer's side,
where the wood soon changes position without any
loss of time save in speed diminished by towing
along additional floating matter. The wood un-
loaded, the lines are cut, and the flat boat floats
back to its station.
Lunch is an agreeable interlude. So is dinner;
and the siesta in the hot cabin. Or the afternoon
lounge by the favored few in the ladies' cabin,
where there is of course the usual variety of non-
sense, flirtation, and music. Or the watching the
daylight fade as promenading the hurricane deck.
Then rings the tea-bell. There is more eating and
drinking. The cards thereafter shuffle brisker at
the table by the bar; and the laughter and fun in
the ladies' cabin sounds better from beneath the
brilliant lights. Then comes sleep; and closes a
day the like of which you will see to-morrow, and
as long thereafter as circumstances and low water
keep you under headway.
Low water!
I gathered some experience as to the meaning of
that phrase after getting into the Ohio. Our skil-
ful pilot had brought us past a half dozen of boats
184 LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD.
smaller than our own who were aground; many of
them, however, very distinguished in a general
way. There was the “General Scott," puffing and
blowing on a sand-bar with all its fires foremost.
There was the General Worth, and the General
Taylor, and the General Washington, all striking
their flags at two or three feet of water, covered
with the ignominy of our passing shrugs and
laugh. But the turn of the “Peytona” came next;
and with a bump which threw the head-steward
into the door of a state-room he was entering
among a parcel of trunks; and brought powerful
groans from all the freight of nervousness on
board; and upset the calculations of a trio of ama-
teur sharpers who were being pigeoned by their
would-be-victim, the boat" brought up” on a sand-
bar.
“More steam” was the word passed to the engi-
neer; while the heaviest of the passengers held a
mass meeting in the stern to lighten the weight of
the boat on the bar, and thus enable the boat to
back out and feel a better channel. Swifter and
swifter revolved the paddles; fire flashed from the
furnace-eyes of the “Peytona;" she was spurred to
the utmost of her powers; but “the nature of the
course proved too much." A flat boat was near at
hand and the usual business of lightening cargo by
throwing us overboard-don't stare—into the said
flat boat was immediately resorted to. The latter
was soon filled with her male cargo, leaving the
LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD. 185
ladies and babies on board; thus forming a sort of
nautical Methodist assemblage. The proceeding
answered, and the good river Ohio, no doubt,
pleased with this offering of man's pride to the
power of her channel, lowered the sands beneath
us and over the bar we went.
Of all places in the world for the study of hu-
manity in all its variety of light and shade, in all
its grotesqueness, picturesqueness, and kaleidoscope
changes of charater, give me the Mississippi steam-
boat. Industrious patronage of Manhattan omni-
buses, particularly the line which boast the guar-
dianship of town-renowned “Kipp & Brown," or
of the Harlem Railroad cars below 6 Twenty-
Seventh street,” may do something for the “proper
study of mankind.” I am not sure but that dili-
gent pursuit of novelty in the direction of our city
suburb, “Hoboken," of summer afternoons, may
be of benefit in the same line. But travel on the
Mississippi River and you will give the palm to its
steamboats. Here meet all the grades of life; a
thousand chapters of human history bind them.
selves ever in the cabins, capable on slight ac-
quaintance of an interesting reading ; human
passion in every variety turns its sides for inspec-
tion. A week of contact rubs off the outer coat.
ings of selfishness; picks the locks of mind ;
unfolds a score of conventional heart-coverings;
lays bare a thousand tricks of life; and fills your
186 LEAVING NEW ORLEANS RIVER-WARD.
book of mental observation with curious and
valuable notes and addenda for reference.
Let no Manhattaner hankering after foreign
travel neglect to "voyage it” on the western
waters before breathing European air,
A P PENDIX.
The individual here alluded to Mr. John McDonough—has
deceased while these pages are passing through the press;
and as the newspapers have made his name, peculiarities, and
circumstances of life and death somewhat notorious, I beg
leave to add a few of my personal reminiscences concerning
him.
During my visit to New Orleans my attention became early
attracted to a tall gaunt figure, which, clad in a suit of blue
cloth-the coat having brass buttons-surmounted by a rather
faded hat; the neck covered by a white neck-'kerchief, not of
the most spotless hue; which tightly grasping in its hand the
handle of a green umbrella sculled through the streets at a
rapid rate. This was Mr. McDonough, the deceased Mill-
ionaire. In his soulless face, and chilliness of demeanor, he
realized, more than any other I ever saw, the idea of Douglass
Jerrold's, “ The Man of Money.” In many respects he was ex-
ceedingly like the character just alluded to. And even before
reading that novel I had fashioned Mr. McDonough to my own
fancy, as a man whose heart was exhausted of human blood,
and beating alone from the instinct of monied interest; whose
strength of body and mind decayed with every dollar that he
spent.
Upon inquiry of the habitues of the city into the history of
188
APPENDIX.
this strange personage, I learned he was a native of Baltimore,
which city he had quitted at the age of twenty-one to settle in
the then far off province of Louisiana. That, reaching New
Orleans, he had embarked in successful trade; and had ever
since lived but for the one purpose-of amassing wealth
That he resided in the cheerless district of Algiers; denying
himself the ordinary comforts of life; destitute of society ;
moner feelings of humanity; and grasping and overbearing in
all his intercourse with his fellow-man. Apparently without
a relation in the world; friendless, for he had no heart wherein
because none could hate, where there was so much to pity.
In this manner he had lived for over half a century; and was
as much a part of Franco-American Louisiana as the bogs of its
soil or the fogs of its swamps, and, indeed, not unlike them in
the cheerless influence of his presence. Of himself he would
at times talk quite freely, but it was always of what he was
going to do in the future, not of what he had effected or was
doing. His personal expenses being somewhat less than that
of an ordinary coal-heaver, he was enabled to accumulate,
year by year, landed property, which is now supposed to be in
value some millions of dollars. If he was seen to ride in an
omnibus, the circumstance was chronicled by the gossipers as
an event. He was once known to purchase an orange; but
the huxter-woman from whom he bought it was ever after-
wards remarkable for her ill-luck. Although the ferriage from
his place to New Orleans cost but a trifle, whenever he visited
the city, he was accustomed to be rowed across the rapid cur-
rent of the river in a frail skiff. Returning home he inimedi-
ately divested himself of his characteristic habiliments, and put
his appearance on a par with that of his commonest negro
slave.
He was a man of considerable education; of great business
sagacity; shrewd and quick in calculation; and a logical capi-
APPENDIX.
189
talist. So that his ends were attained, he had no scruple for the
means; and in the purchase of a large quantity of city bonds,
and the ratification of their sale, through the influence of a
judge—who afterwards fled from the city in dire disgrace-
there lives a mystery, which none can unravel, but which, if
seen through, would probably result in an unfavorable aspect
for the deceased millionaire. He died in the latter end of Oc-
tober, 1850, from a sudden attack of bilious colic. The new-
est stranger in town had scarcely ceased to wonder at the
outre appearance of the miser who he had just seen, when he
learned the fact of his death. It was extensively known
through the city that Mr. McDonough entertained very pecu-
liar ideas concerning the bequest of his vast estate. With an
affectation of piety, to the sincerity of which every outward
action of his life gave the most palpable lie, he had announced
that he was but accumulating property for the Lord. For
many days speculation was rife as to the contents of his will.
What disinterestedness was to be expected from it may be
easily guessed at, when one remembers, that at one era in his
life-time he demanded praise from the philanthropic world for
freeing a ship-load of negroes, and sending them to Africa,
whom, in truth, he had compelled to the purchase of them-
selves at his own premium valuation. On opening the will, it
was discovered that several millions in value of his landed pro-
perty, were directed to be held in trust for the purpose of
founding an eleemosynary institution in his native State ; while
he had left but the most miserable pittance to the blood-rela-
tions, to whom in his life-time, he had “ turned the cold shoul-
der." These, however, were on the watch for a descent upon
his peculiarities of testamentary disposition, for the purpose of
recognizing, through the medium of law, their claims to a por-
tion of their miserly kinsman's earnings. Without being
allowed more than a cursory glance at the detail of his will, I
should think that those portions of it, which lock up his vast
estate--perhaps with a cheating of the State in the matter of
190
APPENDIX.
taxation, while it is held for charitable purposes—are contrary
to the civil law jurisprudence of Louisiana, where all bequests
in the nature of fidei commissa are prohibited. The lawyers and
notaries of his adopted city will now have an opportunity of
fully sharing disbursements from an estate which was so jeal-
ously guarded from legal encroachments. The most superfi-
cial observer would say, that unless the nut was certain to be
cracked, so many legal hammers would not be put in requisi-
tion, when the prospect of extrinsic emolument was so slight
--the heirs being as poor in creature comforts as was their
ancestor, although not with the same choice.
Some may plead to my declarations the classical statute of
limitations which recites “de mortuis. dicere' nil nisi bonum,
but to the universality of this maxim I beg leave to respect-
fully demur.
If the life of a man, in praise of whom the tongue must be
silent, affords any instructive lesson, it is the duty of all to pro-
fit by its narration. And the life of Mr. McDonough certainly
teaches his contemporaries and posterity that Christian charity
should oftenest adorn every day life and character. That to
neglect the commoner instincts of humanity unto an old age,
in order to build up a selfish monument of posthumous fame,
is no way to satisfy the purposes of probationary existence; or
to balance accounts with the Almighty power, whose blessings
were so bounteously poured out upon their unworthy re-
cipient.
198 MAR 16

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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